Positive bystanding behavior in cyberbullying: The impact of empathy on adolescents´ cyber bullied support behavior

Cyberbullying is becoming an epidemic problem in adolescents. The accelerated diffusion of information in an online environment exposes bullying messages to a large group of bystanders who witness such incidents. However, bystanders have received much less research attention than the aggressors and victims in the cyberbullying. The current research aims to understand whether adolescents´ empathy has an impact on their positive by standing behavior - cyber bullied support behavior. Drawing on related theories and models, we proposed two hypotheses about the effect of empathy. A mixture of survey questionnaire and focus group was used to test the hypotheses. The analysis results of the survey data provided support for the effect of cognitive empathy but not affective empathy. The focus group study revealed that adolescent bystanders preferred offering indirect support to the cyber bullied by reporting to adults over direct intervention. The findings highlight the important roles of empathy training as well as teacher and parent intervention in preventing and curtaining cyberbullying both within and beyond the school environments.