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Abstract
Adolescents’ bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying contributes to reducing the harm done to cyberbullying victims. This study examined the relationships and underlying mechanisms of parental warmth, friendship quality, empathy and bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying among 848 Chinese adolescents (43.986% girls, mean age = 14.960 years old [SD = 1.398]). The results showed that parental warmth, friendship quality and empathy were all positively correlated with bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying among adolescents. Both friendship quality and empathy played a mediating role between parental warmth and bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying, indicating that parental warmth was associated with increased bystander defending behavior through higher levels of friendship quality and empathy, respectively. Friendship quality and empathy also played a chain mediating role between these two, indicating that parental warmth was linked to increased bystander defending behavior by first associating with higher level of friendship quality and subsequently with greater empathy. These results suggest that high degrees of parental warmth, friendship quality and empathy may all increase the likelihood of bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying among adolescents. This study provides practical implications for improving adolescent bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying.
Ethical approval
This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Sichuan Normal University. All participants agreed to participate in this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Fang Li
Fang Li is an associate professor in the School of Psychology at Sichuan Normal University. His research focuses on understanding factors and mechanisms that influencing online behavior.
Chuyou Gou
Chuyou Gou is a Master’s student in the School of Psychology at Sichuan Normal University, and her research field is network psychology.
Xu Tang
Xu Tang is a Master’s student in the School of Psychology at Sichuan Normal University. She is interested in the influencing factors of online behavior.
Yuedong Qiu
Yuedong Qiu is a Master’s student in the School of Psychology at Sichuan Normal University. She is interested in bystander behavior in cyberbullying and her research focuses on the effects of family factors on bystander behavior in cyberbullying.
Mengxue Deng
Mengxue Deng is a Master’s student in the School of Psychology at Sichuan Normal University. She is interested in the development of cyber-bystanders.
Xiaojie Ji
Xiaojie Ji is a Master’s student in the School of Psychology at Sichuan Normal University. Her research field is network psychology.