The Severity of Cyberbullying Affects Bystander Intervention Among College Students: The Roles of Feelings of Responsibility and Empathy

Liangjiecheng Huang; Weiqiang Li; Zikai Xu; Hongli Sun; Danfeng Ai; Yinfeng Hu; Shiqi Wang; Yu Li; Yanyan Zhou

doi:10.2147/PRBM.S397770

The Severity of Cyberbullying Affects Bystander Intervention Among College Students: The Roles of Feelings of Responsibility and Empathy

Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2023 Mar 21:16:893-903. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S397770. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Liangjiecheng Huang¹, Weiqiang Li¹, Zikai Xu¹, Hongli Sun¹, Danfeng Ai¹, Yinfeng Hu¹, Shiqi Wang¹, Yu Li¹, Yanyan Zhou¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Background: Bystander intervention can protect victims from harm in cyberbullying. Previous studies have found that the severity of cyberbullying incidents is one of the important factors affecting decisions to intervene. However, little is known about the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this effect.

Purpose: The current study explored the effect of the severity of cyberbullying incidents on bystander intention to intervene on social network sites (SNSs) among college students (Experiment 1), the mediating role of feelings of responsibility (Experiment 2) and the moderating role of empathy (Experiment 3).

Patients and methods: We presented cyberbullying incidents with different levels of severity through scenarios including fictive Weibo news reports and comments. Participants were exposed to a fictive cyberbullying incident and asked to complete a questionnaire including measures of the variables of interest.

Results: Our results showed that the severity of incidents positively affected bystander intention to intervene through the mediation of feelings of responsibility. Empathy moderated the effect of incident severity on bystander intention to intervene.

Conclusion: The results of the current study help to understand the behavior of bystanders in cyberbullying and they provide a practical reference for intervention in cyberbullying incidents.

Keywords: bystander; cyberbullying; incident severity; intention to intervene; social network sites.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by The Ministry of education of Humanities and Social Science Youth Foundation Project (grant number 18YJC190011) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 31871091).