The Complex Antecedents of Bystander Intentions in Higher Education Bullying

Abstract

In higher education, relational bullying among students is a prevalent concern encompassing complex social processes and affecting not only bullies and their targets but also uninvolved bystanders. These witnesses to bullying react to bullying incidents in various prosocial and antisocial ways depending on sociocognitive, emotional and moral factors. A literature review revealed that much of the research on bystander involvement in bullying does not examine more than one prosocial or antisocial behaviour simultaneously. The present dissertation examines some determinants of bystander behaviour and their distinct associations with specific prosocial and antisocial intentions towards bullying in higher education students. A quantitative vignette-based study was conducted with 419 undergraduate university students in the United Kingdom, yielding three articles based on three distinct extended frameworks of Icek Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behaviour (TPB). The theory assumes that behavioural intentions predicted by attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control may be used as a proxy for actual behaviour.

The first article examines whether the TPB framework extended with perceived moral norms is applicable to the context of bystander intentions in higher education bullying in general. The second article examines distinct associations of the prosocial bystander intentions of confronting bullies, comforting the victim and reporting the bullying with TPB variables, empathic concern and anticipated regret. It reports that traditional TPB variables were associated with the intention to confront bullies, whereas emotional variables were associated with the intention to comfort the victim. Moreover, students who perceived having control over their own behaviour were less inclined to report the bullying when emotional determinants were considered. The third article examines the three antisocial intentions of aggressively defending the victim, reinforcing the bullying and ignoring the bullying and their distinct associations with TPB variables, basic moral sensitivity towards bullying and moral disengagement. The traditional TPB variables were associated (albeit only partly) only with the intention to ignore the bullying. Moreover, the results indicate that the relationships between basic moral sensitivity towards bullying and the three antisocial intentions were mediated through moral disengagement.

The present dissertation first establishes the efficacy of the TPB in the bystander context, with a focus on relational bullying, to lay the foundation for more specific analyses of prosocial and antisocial intentions towards bullying, drawing a holistic picture of this multidimensional field of research. The three articles provide valuable insights into the complexity of prosocial and antisocial bystander intentions towards relational bullying in university students. Distinct associations between behavioural intentions and socio-cognitive, emotional and moral factors may be identified that offer novel information for the development of resource-oriented educational strategies in higher education to encourage prosocial bystander involvement. The contribution of this dissertation to the research field lies in the distinctions between various prosocial or antisocial bystander intentions. Examining distinct bystander intentions and their individual determinants provided nuanced insights into the associations between attitudes, norms, emotions and morality and six distinct bystander intentions. This approach yielded important knowledge on prosocial and antisocial bystander intentions in the higher education context and further develops the research field while informing the development of strategies to foster students’ specific bystander behaviours towards relational bullying.