Citation

Barlińska J, Szuster A, Winiewski M. Front. Psychol. 2018; 9: e799.

Affiliation

Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00799

PMID

29899715

PMCID

PMC5988850

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate if affective (vicarious sharing of emotions) and cognitive empathy (mental perspective taking) induction may stimulate adolescent online bystanders' intervention in cyberbullying cases. The role of reporting the abuse is crucial because it is a form of active support to the victim, initiated by children, to stop the bullying. The effectiveness of empathy activation in decreasing negative cyberbystander reinforcing behavior has been proved in previous studies. The effects of affective and cognitive empathy activation on positive cyberbystander behavior, defined as reporting the bullying online, were explored in two follow-up studies N = 271 and N = 265. The influence of experiencing cyberbullying as perpetrator, victim, and as determined by gender on prosocial cyberbystander behavior was also controlled. The results indicate that only cognitive empathy activation increases the likelihood of intervening bystander behavior. Neither affective empathy induction, previous experience of cyberperpetration, cybervictimization, nor gender affected the engagement in prosocial bystander behavior. The conclusion of the research is that a program consequently activating more reflective cognitive empathy induction can contribute toward the establishment of healthier behavioral patterns among bystanders to cyberbullying, increasing the probability of their reporting the cyberbullying acts.

Language: en

Keywords

adolescents; affective empathy induction; cognitive empathy induction; cyberbullying; cyberbystanders; prosocial cyberbystander behavior