Shaping mechanisms and evidence-based governance pathways of bystander defending behaviors in school bullying

Abstract: The school climate serves as a pivotal microenvironment for the development of adolescents’ social behaviors and constitutes a critical component of school bullying intervention and governance. Previous research has indicated that adverse peer relationships are a key school environmental risk factor for predicting bullying and victimization, whereas bystander defending behaviors constitute one of the critical school environmental protective factors in terminating bullying events. However, traditional studies have mostly adopted a static perspective to focus on the predictive effects of a limited number of variables on bystander defending behaviors, thus failing to address the scientific question regarding the complex psychological mechanisms underlying why bystanders make divergent behavioral choices in real-world contexts. Furthermore, theoretically driven variable selection and linear analytic approaches have also constrained the discovery of potential pathways, failing to illuminate the intrinsic psychological processes underlying the bystanders’ behavioral decision-making. To address these gaps, the present study attempts to adopt a dynamic perspective of situational interactions, focusing on constructing a three-stage psychological decision-making framework that illustrates how school climate, interpersonal interactions, and bystanders’ personal traits shape bystander defending behaviors through the psychological processes of event identification, emotional experience, and risk-benefit trade offs. These results may provide innovative insights for developing a scientifically sound and comprehensive model of school bullying governance.