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The Impact of Victim Response on Bystanders’ Willingness to Constructively Intervene in the Context of Cyberbullying: The Moderating Effect of State Empathy
Received date: 2024-10-08
Online published: 2025-06-07
Copyright
In the context of cyberbullying, online bystanders play a crucial role in the evolution of the incident. In this study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of cyberbullying victims’ response on bystanders’ willingness to constructively intervene and the moderating effect of state empathy. Experiment 1 examined the effects of counterattack, help-seeking and neglect on bystanders’ willingness to constructively intervene to help others by manipulating the different responses of cyberbullying victims. Experiment 2 examined the moderating effect of state empathy through the adapted classic situation priming paradigm. The results showed that: 1) Compared with the victim’s neglect behavior, their help-seeking and counterattack behaviors aroused the bystander’s stronger willingness to intervene constructively. 2) In the relationship between the victim’s response and the bystander’s willingness to constructively intervene, state empathy played a positive moderating role. The results not only reveal the influence mechanism of bystanders’ constructive intervention intention, but also provide enlightenment and reference for preventing and alleviating cyberbullying.
Yongyao ZHAO , Ye ZHANG , Peipei XUE , Xiaonan ZHANG , Menghui WEI . The Impact of Victim Response on Bystanders’ Willingness to Constructively Intervene in the Context of Cyberbullying: The Moderating Effect of State Empathy[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2025 , 23(2) : 241 -248 . DOI: 10.12139/j.1672-0628.2025.02.013
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