The Influence of Perception of Group Attitudes and the Relationship with Victims on Bystander’s Behaviors:the Moderating Effect of Relationships with the Victims
AbstractBackground: The intervention to bullying of bystanders is particularly effective. However，most bystanders are just outsiders who passively watch what happens. Understanding the deep reasons of the behaviors is one of an important measures to induce and educate children to intervene the bullying，be bold to object the bullies，and protect the bullied. The theory of Pluralistic Ignorance is a new perspective to explain the outsiders’ passive conducts. Research Questions: Firstly，is there a difference of prosocial attitudes toward the acceptability of bullying in demographic variables? Secondly，are the bystanders’ perceptions of pro-social attitude to themselves different from that to their peers’ different? That is，if there exists pluralistic ignorance. We divide all peers group into three sub groups according to their relationships with the participants to test whether there are differences among the pluralistic ignorance of self-my friends，self-popular classmates，self-general classmates. Finally，do the discrepancies in the second question contribute to bystanders’protective behaviors? If there is an influence between the two？Is that relation regulated by demographic variables such as race and the relationship between the victims and bystanders?Methods: A survey of 411 elementary,middle and high school students’ attitudes toward bullying was conducted through the use of questionnaires. The participants reported their attitudes and perceptions of three different peer groups’ attitudes about bullying，as well as their behavior responses when they witness a bullying episode.Results: The participates’attitudes toward the acceptability of bullying are different in demographic variables，such as age，sex，boarders or day students，boarding schools or day schools，but nationality does not have any clear influence on their attitudes. The bystanders’ perceptions of their own pro-social attitude distinguish from their peers’—there exists pluralistic ignorance. The differences among the pluralistic ignorance of self-my friends，self-popular classmates，self-general classmates are significant.Further，misperception of group norms was associated with the students’ reports of behavioral responses to bullying: Children were more likely to protect the victims with similar perceived attitudes and the same nationality as themselves. Conclusion: There is a difference between different groups on children’s Pluralistic Ignorance. Children thought themselves more pro-social than any other groups. Meanwhile，the more intimate the participants and the group were，the more pro-social they perceived the group was (the discrepancy between self and the intimate group was small). Furthermore，there was an association between bystanders’ Pluralistic Ignorance and protective behaviors，which was regulated by some factors of victims.
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