Children's Physiological and Emotional Reactions to Witnessing Bullying Predict Bystander Intervention

Study goals were to explore whether children clustered into groups based on reactions to witnessing bullying and to examine whether these reactions predicted bullying intervention. Seventy-nine children (M = 10.80 years) watched bullying videos in the laboratory while their heart rate (HR) was measu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 2013-01, Vol.84 (1), p.375-390
Main Authors: Barhight, Lydia R., Hubbard, Julie A., Hyde, Christopher T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affective Behavior
Biological and medical sciences
Bullying
Bullying - physiology
Bullying - psychology
Child
Child Behavior
Child Development
Children
Children & youth
Crime Victims
Developmental psychology
Elementary School Students
Emotional Response
Emotions
Emotions - physiology
Empathy
Empathy - physiology
EMPIRICAL ARTICLES
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Grade 4
Grade 5
Group Membership
Groups
Heart rate
Heart Rate - physiology
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Intervention
Male
Negative emotions
Peer Group
Peer groups
Peers
Physiology
Prediction
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Schools
Self Report
Social Self Efficacy Scale
United States (Mid Atlantic States)
Victims
Videotapes
Witnesses
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Study goals were to explore whether children clustered into groups based on reactions to witnessing bullying and to examine whether these reactions predicted bullying intervention. Seventy-nine children (M = 10.80 years) watched bullying videos in the laboratory while their heart rate (HR) was measured, and they self-reported on negative emotion after each video. Bullying intervention was assessed by school peers. Two groups emerged based on reactions to the bullying videos: The Emotional group (43% of children) displayed HR acceleration and reported high negative emotion, whereas the Unemotional group (57% of children) showed HR deceleration and reported low negative emotion. Group membership predicted bullying intervention, with peers reporting that Emotional children were more likely to stop a bully than Unemotional children.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01839.x