Confronting the Bullies, Comforting the Victim, or Reporting to University Staff? Prosocial Intentions Towards Social Exclusion in University Students.

Abstract

Social exclusion as a form of in-person relational bullying in higher education (HE) leads to loneliness in students and puts their mental well-being at risk. Utilising and extending the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), we investigated prosocial intentions towards bullying in HE students. We included empathic concern and anticipated regret to potentially explain differences in three behavioural intentions towards bullying: comforting the victim, confronting the bullies, and reporting the bullying to the university. The sample comprised 419 participants in an online sample from the UK (MAge = 22.76 years, SDAge = 4.02 years; 47.0% male, 50.6% female, 2.4% other) who filled in a digital questionnaire consisting of a short vignette describing an in-person situation of relational bullying. Applying structural equation modelling, we examined the three prosocial behavioural intentions towards bullying as outcome variables in two models while controlling for age, gender, and socially desirable responding. Traditional TPB predictors were positively associated with confronting the bullies. Empathic concern and anticipated regret were positively associated with comforting the victim. These results demonstrate how cognitive and emotional predictors uniquely contribute to prosocial intentions towards bullying among students. We discuss practical implications for the design of anti-bullying strategies in HE.