MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4409285856 · doi:10.1007/s40894-025-00262-6

What are the Features of Playful and Harmful Teasing and When Does it Cross the Line? A Systematic Review and Meta-synthesis of Qualitative Research on Peer Teasing

2025· review· en· W4409285856 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueAdolescent Research Review · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicBullying, Victimization, and Aggression
Canadian institutionsBrock University
FundersUniversity of South Carolina
KeywordsPsychologyPeer reviewQualitative researchMeta-analysisLine (geometry)SociologyMedicinePolitical scienceSocial science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Peer teasing is a complex, versatile, and universal form of social interaction, common within youth’s peer relationships. Despite its prevalence, a comprehensive understanding of how youth themselves define this interaction, and the myriad features of playful and harmful teasing experience is lacking in the field. The current review aimed to coalesce the evidence detailing youth’s definitions and experiences of teasing from qualitative studies in a two-part systematic review and meta-synthesis. Part 1 of this review applied a conceptual framework of features of teasing (e.g., content, perpetrator, relationship between target and perpetrator) to understand (1) how youth define teasing and (2) the features present in playful versus harmful teasing experiences. In Part 2, additional analysis examined (3) how combinations of teasing features yield playful versus harmful interpretations by youth, (4) how youth conceptualize teasing across development, and (5) which features of teasing are most salient for youth when determining whether teasing “crosses the line” from playful to harmful. A total of 4134 records were screened, of which 35 were included in the review. Using thematic analysis, results in Part 1 indicated that youth defined teasing along a continuum from playful to harmful. There was substantial overlap in the features of harmful and playful teasing (e.g., teasing meant to be playful could still cause harm). Playful teasing was more likely among friends, whereas harmful teasing often focused on appearance and personal characteristics. Further, the experience of positive emotions and relationship benefits were only found in youth’s descriptions of playful teasing experiences whereas harmful teasing experiences incurred relationship damage. In Part 2, analysis revealed that certain combinations of features are important for the differentiation between playful and harmful teasing (e.g., interaction between teasing content, relationship, and context). In terms of developmental patterns, younger children tended to view teasing as primarily harmful whereas adolescents recognized the capacity for play in teasing interactions, especially among friends. Lastly, when determining whether teasing crossed the line from playful to harmful, youth considered key features including the tone and content of the tease, perpetrator identity, whether the teasing was repeated, and whether the tease was intended to—or did—cause harm. Implications for the growing understanding of the complexity and nuance in playful versus harmful teasing are discussed.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.042
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.019
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Meta-epidemiology (narrow)
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: Systematic review
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.096
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0420.019
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0050.001
Bibliometrics0.0000.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.002
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0000.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.396
GPT teacher head0.572
Teacher spread0.176 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it