Standing up to bullying: A social ecological review of peer defending in offline and online contexts

Highlights

• Both offline and online defending are associated with individual, peer, family, and school correlates.

• Empathy was the most researched individual correlate, with all significant findings (75%) positively related to defending.

• For offline defending, sociometric status was the most researched correlate, and its association may be bidirectional.

• The bystander model was the most studied correlate of online defending, with most research (84%) noting a positive link.

Abstract

Bullying is a relationship problem that most often occurs in the presence of peers. Peers who witness bullying play a critical role in intervening. Peer intervention, or defending, is a complex behavior. Defending a victimized peer can occur offline and online, with many similarities between the two contexts. This paper, guided by the Social Ecological Model, systematically reviewed the correlates associated with defending at different levels including: individual, peer, family, and school. Inclusion criteria retrieved a final sample of 130 original, peer-reviewed research articles on offline defending, and 25 articles for online defending.

Consistent results across both contexts reveal that individuals who defend tend to be girls, have high empathy and low moral disengagement, are popular and well-liked by their peers, and perceive supportive relationships with their parents, teachers, and schools. More research is needed to understand interactions that may occur between levels of the model, as defending is a complex behavior that cannot be characterized by isolated correlates.

Introduction

Bullying is a relationship problem that most often occurs in the presence of other youth. Peers play an important role in protecting one another against bullying. Youth who intervene to support their bullied peers are known as “defenders”. Defending represents any prosocial action taken to stop bullying, including actively intervening to stop the bullying scenario, seeking support from an adult, and comforting the victimized youth (Salmivalli, 2010). These prosocial behaviors can happen in both offline and online contexts. The majority of peers who witness bullying do not intervene, with only 17–19% of witnesses taking the role of a defender in offline bullying (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001; Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Österman, & Kaukiainen, 1996). For online defending, prevalence rates vary between 9 and 50% (Dillon & Bushman, 2015; Freis & Gurung, 2013; Huang & Chou, 2010; Lenhart et al., 2011). When peers do defend, however, they often are effective in stopping bullying (Hawkins et al., 2001). In addition, peer defending behavior is negatively associated with bullying frequency within classrooms (Salmivalli, Voeten, & Poskiparta, 2011). Students who are victimized directly benefit from peer defending. They report higher self-esteem, peer acceptance, and popularity relative to their non-defended peers (Sainio, Veenstra, Huitsing, & Salmivalli, 2010). Despite the potential benefits of defending, many students remain passive bystanders when they witness bullying. Defending is a complex social interaction that unfolds in multiple social contexts. The current study employed a Social Ecological Model to guide a systematic review of the individual, family, peer, and school correlates of defending behavior in school bullying.

Social Ecological Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) conceptualizes human development as the result of many nested social contexts. Individual factors, such as gender and personality, are at the innermost level, followed by the peers, families, schools, neighborhoods, and societal factors at the most distal level. Each level of influence is theorized to both directly influence individual development, and to interact with more proximal factors (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The Social Ecological Model has been extensively examined in youth development and is readily applicable to the study of bullying and peer defending because these are complex relationship processes that are influenced by the social context. Empirical research also highlights the necessity of adopting a Social Ecological framework for conceptualizing defending behavior. Rates of defending can be highly variable between peer groups, classrooms, and schools. For example, research demonstrates that 36% of the variance within defending can be attributed to differences between peer groups (Espelage, Green, & Polanin, 2012). Similarly, estimates suggest that approximately 10–36% of the variance within defending can be attributed to differences between classrooms (Peets, Pöyhönen, Juvonen, & Salmivalli, 2015; Pozzoli, Gini, & Vieno, 2012; Salmivalli et al., 2011). Thus, an approach that takes these multiple levels into account may help us to best understand the factors that promote defending behavior, as defending is more than a product of individual differences.

Offline and online defending differ in a few key ways. First, the timing of defending differs across contexts. Offline, opportunities to defend occur in the same moment as the bullying takes place, whereas for cyberbullying, the opportunities for defending are ongoing. For instance, mean comments or embarrassing photos can be redistributed or replicated at any time without a defined end point online. Due to the continuous and permanent nature of cyberbullying, it allows individuals to defend online at any point in time, rather than only when the cyberbullying initially takes place. Second, the level of risk or costs associated with defending may vary across these two contexts, making offline defending potentially more risky than online defending. Online defenders may be anonymous or physically removed from the situation while offline defenders are not. Third, the method by which support is given may differ across contexts. Online defenders may comfort victimized individuals in both offline and online environments (i.e., by reaching out at school or on the Internet through private messages or in a public forum), while offline defending most often occurs in person (Machackova, Dedkova, Sevcikova, & Cerna, 2016). While offline and online defending are unique behaviors, they are likely influenced by the same levels of the Social Ecological Model due to the high overlap in offline and online bullying. Youth who experience cyberbullying are often victimized by the same individuals both offline and online, and are more likely to be cyberbullied by students in their same class than by students in different classes (Wegge, Vandebosch, & Eggermont, 2014). In addition, youth are more likely to defend schoolmates who experience cyberbullying than strangers, suggesting that offline peer group and classroom contexts matter in online defending (Machackova et al., 2016). Given the overlap in offline and online defending, the social context may play a large role in influencing both offline and online defending behavior. In this paper, we review the research from a Social Ecological perspective on both offline and online defending.