The purpose of this research is to verify the relationship between religious orientation and bystander roles in bullying situation, focusing on mediating effect of prosocial behavior and morality.
There are five participant roles in bullying: bullie...
The purpose of this research is to verify the relationship between religious orientation and bystander roles in bullying situation, focusing on mediating effect of prosocial behavior and morality.
There are five participant roles in bullying: bullies, victims, bully-followers, outsiders, and defenders of victims. This research is focused on the last three groups including bully-followers, outsiders, and defenders of victims. This group is called bystanders. bystanders are important because they can worsen the bullying situation or increase the number of bullying situations, while preventing bullying. According to the advanced researches, there are more possibilities to defend victims when adolescents have more positive strengths. Many positive strengths which affect the behavior of defenders were founded such as empathy, kindness, prosocial behavior, morality, sociability, popularity and so on. These factors are also related to religion. In the field of Positive Psychology, religion is one of the most important factors which have influence on positive strengths such as happiness, adaptation, satisfaction, and so on. So, based on these advanced researches and theories, religion can also be the positive strength influencing on the defending behavior. Furthermore, relying on the type of the religious orientation including external religious orientation and internal religious orientation, different results could occur in bystander roles. However, this is difficult to figure out the direct relationship between the religious orientation and bystander roles. Some kinds of positive strengths which are related to both religion and bullying can affect between them.
This study aims to explore the relationship between the religious orientation and bystander roles when bullying occurs. More specifically, the following questions were posed:
First, do religious orientation, prosocial behavior and morality affect the bystander’s behavior?
Second, Does prosocial behavior or morality mediate between religious orientation and bystander roles?
370 middle school and high school students in Gyeonggi province were selected as subjects. The survey was conducted in eight schools and a catholic church. Data analysis was done by frequency study, Chi-square test, multiple regression analysis, categorical regression analysis, and hierarchical regression using SPSS 18.0 program to verify the research questions.
Major findings are as in the following.
First, gender differences and school level differences were found in the behaviors of participants in bullying. Among boys, the number of bully-followers is the highest in the bystander role, while that of defenders of victims is the highest among girls. In school level, middle school has more defenders of victims than high school, while outsiders are more in high school than in middle school. It means adolescents change their role in the bullying situation from defenders of victims to outsiders as they get older.
Second, bystanders were categorized as three groups of bully-followers, outsiders, and defenders of victims based on their responses. These three groups showed significant differences in the levels of external religious orientation, internal religious orientation, prosocial behavior and morality. Morality was identified as a significant predictor of bully-followers. As adolescents have low level of morality, they tend to be the bully-followers. External religious orientation, internal religious orientation, prosocial behavior and morality were identified as significant predictors of outsiders. As the level of the external religious orientation is high, religious adolescents are likely to be outsiders. Except external religious orientation, the other three factors were negatively influence on outsiders. At last, internal religious orientation and prosocial behavior were identified as significant predictors of defenders of victims.
Third, this study examined the mediating effect of prosocial behavior and morality between the religious orientations and bystander roles. Prosocial behavior and morality are identified as significant mediating variables between the internal religious orientation and bystander roles. The results imply that adolescents’ internal religious orientation influence indirectly on their bystander roles in bullying situation when they have high level of prosocial behavior or morality.
The results of this study suggest are presented below:
First, according to the bystander role, gender, the level of school, or the kind of religious orientation, the way of approach should be different.
Second, there is a need to reflect the strengths of the defenders of victims which are internal religious orientation, prosocial behavior and morality as the educational component when developing bullying-prevention programs in schools, churches or temples. The limit of the current study and implications for future research were discussed.