Abstract
This study investigated the extent to which adolescents’ personal normative attitudes (also referred to as personal norms) and perceived peer norms regarding bullying, sexual harassment, and bystander intervention predicted each step of the five-step bystander intervention model (i.e., Notice, Interpret, Accept Responsibility, Know how to Help, Act) for bullying and sexual harassment among two-hundred thirty-three high school students in the Northeastern United States. Interaction effects of gender, personal norms, and perceived peer norms were also assessed. As predicted, perceived peer norms moderated the relations between personal norms and all five bystander intervention steps. However, some effects differed by gender and some differed in direction from predictions. Students who were more anti-bullying/harassment scored higher on some bystander intervention steps when they also perceived their peers to be more anti-bullying and harassment, with some models showing gender differences between male and female students. Personal and perceived peer norms are related to adolescents’ engagement in the bystander intervention model, suggesting that both norms should be targets of interventions encouraging youth to intervene in incidents of bullying and sexual harassment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. (2001). Hostile hallways: Bullying, teasing, and sexual harassment in school. Author.
Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Prentice-Hall.
Berkowitz, A. D. (2004). The social norms approach: Theory, research, and annotated bibliography. Retrieved from: www.alanberkowitz.com
Brown, C. S., Biefeld, S. D., & Elpers, N. (2020). A bioecological theory of sexual harassment of girls: Research synthesis and proposed model. Review of General Psychology, 24, 299–320. https://doi.org/10.1177/1089268020954363
Brown, A. L., & Messman-Moore, T. L. (2010). Personal and perceived peer attitudes supporting sexual aggression as predictors of male college students’ willingness to intervene against sexual aggression. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25(3), 503–517. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260509334400
Casey, E. A., Lindhorst, T., & Storer, H. L. (2017). The situational-cognitive model of adolescent bystander behavior: Modeling bystander decision-making in the context of bullying and teen dating violence. Psychology of Violence, 7, 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000033
Charmaraman, L., Jones, A. E., Stein, N., & Espelage, D. L. (2013). Is it bullying or sexual arassment? Knowledge, attitudes, and professional development experiences of middle school staff. Journal or School Health, 83, 438–444. https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.12048
Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(6), 1015–1026. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.1015
Coker, A. L., Bush, H. M., Brancato, C. J., Clear, E. R., & Recktenwald, E. A. (2019). Bystander program effectiveness to reduce violence acceptance: RCT in high schools. Journal of Family Violence, 34, 153–164. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-018-9961-8
Cornell, D., Klein, J., Konold, T., & Huang, F. (2012). Effects of validity screening items on adolescent survey data. Psychological Assessment, 24(1), 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024824
Datta, P., Cornell, D., & Huang, F. (2016). Aggressive attitudes and prevalence of bullying bystander behavior in middle school. Psychology in the Schools, 53(8), 804–816. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21944
Dodeen, H. M. (2003). Effectiveness of valid mean substitution in treating missing data in attitude assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 28(5), 505–513. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930301674
Espelage, D. L., Basile, K. C., & Hamburger, M. E. (2012). Bullying perpetration and subsequent sexual violence perpetration among middle school students. Journal of Adolescent Health, 50(1), 60–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.07.015
Fabiano, P. M., Perkins, H., Berkowitz, A., Linkenbach, J., & Stark, C. (2003). Engaging men as social justice allies in ending violence against women: Evidence for a social norms approach. Journal of American College Health, 52(3), 105–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448480309595732
Fairbairn, J. (2020). Before #MeToo: Violence against women, social media work, bystander intervention, and social change. Societies, 10, 51–72. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030051
Gini, G., Albiero, P., Benelli, B., & Altoè, G. (2008). Determinants of adolescents’ active defending and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. Journal of Adolescence, 31, 93–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2007.05.002
Gladden, R. M., Vivolo-Kantor, A. M., Hamburger, M. E., & Lumpkin, C. D. (2014). Bullying surveillance among youth: Uniform definitions for public health and recommended dataelements, version 1.0. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Education.
Gonulitas, S., & Mulvey, K. L. (2021). Bystander responses to bias‐based bullying and retaliation: Is retaliation perceived as more acceptable than bias‐based bullying? British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12371
Gruber, J., & Fineran, S. (2016). Sexual harassment, bullying, and school outcomes for high school girls and boys. Violence against Women, 22(1), 112–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801215599079
Haines, M. P., Perkins, H. W., Rice, R. M., & Barker, G. (2005). A guide to marketing social norms for health promotion in schools and communities. National Social Norms Resource Center. www.socialnormsresources.org/pdf/Guidebook2.pdf
Jenkins, L., Fredrick, S. S., & Nickerson, A. B. (2018). The assessment of bystander intervention in bullying: Examining measurement invariance across gender and grade. Journal of School Psychology, 69, 73–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2018.05.008
Jenkins, L. N., & Nickerson, A. B. (2017). Bullying participant roles and gender as predictors of bystander intervention. Aggressive Behavior, 43, 281–290. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21688
Jenkins, L. N. & Nickerson, A. B. (2019). Bystander intervention in bullying: Role of social skills and gender. Journal of Early Adolescence, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431617735652
Jenkins, L. N., Snyder Kaminski, S., & Miller, M. (2020). Bystander intervention in bullying: Differences across latent profiles. International Journal of Bullying Prevention, 3, 130–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-020-00067-2
Kubiszewski, V., Auzoult, L., Potard, C., & Lheureux, F. (2018). Witnessing school bullying: To react to not to react? An insight into perceived social norms regulating self-predicted defending and passive behaviours. Educational Psychology, 39(9), 1174–1193. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2018.1530735
Lambe, L. J., Della Cioppa, V., Hong, I. K., & Craig, W. M. (2019). Standing up to bullying: A social ecological review of peer defending in offline and online contexts. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 45, 51–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2018.05.007
Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10(3), 215–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0026570
Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? Prentice Hall. https://doi.org/10.2307/2063973
Menolascino, N., & Jenkins, L. N. (2018). Predicting bystander intervention among middle school students. School Psychology Quarterly, 33(2), 305–313. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000262
Mennicke, A., Kennedy, S. C., Gromer, J., & Klem-O’Connor, M. (2021). Evaluation of a social norms sexual violence prevention marketing campaign targeted toward college men: Attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors over 5 years. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(7–8), NP4000-NP4021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518780411
Meter, D. J., & Card, N. A. (2015). Defenders of victims of peer aggression: Interdependence theory and an exploration of individual, interpersonal, and contextual effects on the defender participant role. Developmental Review, 38, 222–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2015.08.001
Mulvey, K. L., Gönültaş, S., Goff, E., Irdam, G., Carlson, R., DiStefano, C., & Irvin, M. J. (2019). School and family factors predicting adolescent cognition regarding bystander intervention in response to bullying and victim retaliation. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48, 581–596. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0941-3
Nickerson, A. B., Aloe, A. M., Livingston, J. A., & Feeley, T. H. (2014). Measurement of the bystander intervention model for bullying and sexual harassment. Journal of Adolescence, 37, 391–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.03.003
Nickerson, A. B., & Mele-Taylor, D. (2014). Empathetic responsiveness, group norms, and prosocial affiliations in bullying roles. School Psychology Quarterly, 29(1), 99–109. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000052
Nielson, M. G., Schroeder, K. M., Martin, C. L., & Cook, R. E. (2020). Investigating the relation between gender typicality and pressure to conform to gender norms. Sex Roles, 83, 523–535. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01136-y
Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at School. Blackwell Publishing.
Paluck, E. L., & Shepherd, H. (2012). The salience of social referents: A field experiment on collective norms and harassment behavior in a school social network. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(6), 899–915. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030015
Perkins, H. W., Craig, D. W., & Perkins, J. M. (2011). Using social norms to reduce bullying: A research intervention among adolescents in five middle schools. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 14(5), 703–722. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430210398004
Pozzoli, T., & Gini, G. (2010). Active defending and passive bystanding behavior in bullying: The role of personal characteristics and perceived peer pressure. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38(6), 815–827. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-010-9399-9
Pozzoli, T., Gini, G., & Vieno, A. (2012). Individual and class moral disengagement in bullying among elementary school children. Aggressive Behavior, 38(5), 378–388. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21442
Pronk, J., Goossens, F. A., Olthof, T., De Mey, L., & Willemen, A. M. (2013). Children’s intervention strategies in situations of victimization by bullying: Social cognitions of outsiders versus defenders. Journal of School Psychology, 51(6), 669–682. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2013.09.002
Salmivalli, C., Lagerspetz, K., Björkqvist, K., Österman, K., & Kaukiainen, A. (1996). Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group. Aggressive Behavior, 22, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-2337
Salmivalli, C., & Voeten, M. (2004). Connections between attitudes, group norms, and behavior in bullying situations. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28(3), 246–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/01650250344000488
Sandstrom, M. J., & Bartini, M. (2010). Do perceptions of discrepancy between self and group norms contribute to peer harassment at school? Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32(3), 217–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2010.495645
Selya, A. S., Rose, J. S., Dierker, L. C., Hedeker, D., & Mermelstein, R. J. (2012). A practical guide to calculating Cohen’s f2, a measure of local effect size, from PROC MIXED. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 111. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00111
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (1996). Using multivariate statistics (3rd ed.). Harper Collins.
Timmerman, G. (2003). Sexual harassment of adolescents perpetrated by teachers and by peers: An exploration of the dynamics of power, culture, and gender in secondary schools. Sex Roles, 48, 231–244. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022821320739
Walters, G. D., & Espelage, D. L. (2021). Cognitive/affective empathy, pro-bullying beliefs, and willingness to intervene on behalf of a bullied peer. Youth & Society, 53(4), 563–584. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X19858565
Wang, K., Chen, Y., Zhang, J., & Oudekerk, B. A. (2020). Indicators of school crime and safety: 2019. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, and Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Washington, DC.
Yang, A., & Salmivalli, C. (2013). Different forms of bullying and victimization: Bully-victims versus bullies and victims. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 10(6), 723–738. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2013.793596
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Julianna Casella and Yingqi Huang for their assistance with the literature review.
Funding
This research was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences Award R305A190139 (PI: Amanda Nickerson). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of IES.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nickerson, A.B., Manges, M.E., Bellavia, G.M. et al. Bystander Intervention in Bullying and Sexual Harassment: Role of Personal and Perceived Peer Norms. Int Journal of Bullying Prevention 5, 135–150 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00125-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00125-x