Prosocial Behavior, Moral Disengagement and Empathy in Bystanders in School Violence Situations

Bullying is an extreme form of violence between students in the process of school socialization. The aim of the study was to explain how prosocial behavior, empathy and moral disengagement influence the role that students assume as observers, defenders, and/or reinforcers in an hypothetical bullying situation. 1,212 students of 10 public high schools in the State of Sonora participated in the study, who were selected through a non-probabilistic convenience sampling. 54.4% were women, while 45.6% were men. The average age of the total sample was 13.11 (SD = 0.99). Students responded five instruments, which were made up of the identification sheet and the variables prosocial behavior, moral disconnection, empathy and scale of observers in situations of school violence. Analysis of frequencies, comparisons with Student’s t test and logistic regression analysis, found that prosocial behavior and empathy were more closely related to being the defender of the victim, while moral disconnection was related to assuming the role of encouraging aggression. These results are relevant to advance in the discussion of school violence as a group process and evidencing the need to improve intervention designs given the high prevalence of this problem at schools.