Abstract
Witnessing peer victimization is an emotionally salient event, particularly for youth. Given that emotions influence how youth respond to social situations, the emotional experiences of bystanders may influence how they respond to peer victimization. In particular, different defending behaviors may be motivated by different emotional processes among bystanders. The current research used a novel virtual-reality paradigm, Cyberball-VR, to examine the emotional processes underlying how defending occurs in real-time. Cyberball-VR is an adaptation of the Cyberball paradigm in which participants have the opportunity to engage in defending behavior after witnessing social exclusion in the lab. Participants (N = 120) consisted of youth ages 11–14 (49% female). Self-reported data (empathic concern, personal distress, vicarious emotions) and qualitative data (noticing the exclusion and defending during Cyberball-VR) were collected. Witnessing social exclusion in Cyberball-VR elicited changes in vicarious emotions. Noticing the exclusion significantly predicted enacted defending behaviors (comforting and solution-focused), as well as increased vicarious anger. Additionally, empathy (empathic concern and personal distress) and anger interacted to predict different defending behaviors. Results indicated that how youth feel in the moment, as well as their individual tendency to respond to these emotions, influences their subsequent defending behaviors. Potential applications for Cyberball-VR and how it can be used for studying peer defending behaviors are discussed.
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Notes
The terms “ostracism,” “social exclusion,” and “rejection” are often used interchangeably to refer to the experience of being ignored and excluded (Williams, 2009). The social psychology literature, particularly research using Cyberball, often uses the term “ostracism” to refer to this experience, whereas the bullying literature typically using the term “social exclusion.” Given that the focus of this research is bullying, we elected to use the term social exclusion in the current study.
VR environments may enhance the ecological validity of social stress paradigms like Cyberball by enhancing feelings of belonging and presence in social interactions, which may be particularly important for studying the processes associated with peer defending behavior. Two previous studies (Kothgassner et al., 2017; Venturini et al., 2016) have demonstrated the validity of VR adaptations of Cyberball; however, they did not assess vicarious ostracism nor consider the usefulness of the paradigm for studying peer defending. Results from an unpublished pilot study conducted by our research group indicated our VR adaptation was valid for assessing vicarious ostracism and was more likely to elicit defending behaviors relative to the original version of Cyberball.
Of the participants with no technical issues during Cyberball-VR (n = 115), 10% (n = 12) elected not to make observations during the game. Participants who made observations did not significantly differ from those who did not on any of the study variables (all ps > .18). Since non-response is a valid response option, these participants were given codes of 0 for their defending observations.
Reliability analyses indicated difficulties with the two reverse-coded items on the personal distress subscale. Removing these items increases reliability to = .70. In the moderation analyses, the same pattern of results was found for both versions of the subscale. Thus, we elected to use the subscale with all original items.
A priori sample size calculations suggested that a sample size of 85 would be needed for the mediation models (4 predictors, moderate effect size of .15, alpha = .05, and power = .80) and a sample size of 98 would be needed for moderated mediation models (6 predictors, moderate effect size of .15, alpha = .05, and power = .80).
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Reem Atallah, Natalie Mangialardi, Kyla Mayne, Danielle Catenacci, and Mariah Falzone for their assistance with data collection, and thank you to Daniel Clarke at Bear Cloud Games for his assistance with virtual-reality game design.
Funding
Laura Lambe was funded by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr Wendy Craig was funded by a grant from the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada.
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Ethics approval was obtained from Queen’s University General Research Ethics Board. Both parental informed consent and youth assent were obtained.
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Lambe, L.J., Craig, W.M. Anger and Empathy: Exploring the Underlying Emotional Processes of Peer Defending Behaviors Using Virtual Reality. Int Journal of Bullying Prevention 5, 348–361 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00128-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00128-8