Cross-cultural Consideration of Children’s Bystander Behavior in Bullying in the United States and South Korea

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

Bullying threatens children’s healthy development across the world. Despite the role of bystanders in bullying (Espelage, Green, & Polanin, 2012), research on bystander behavior has been predominantly focused on Western populations. Thus, universal and cultural specific aspects of children’s bystander behavior have been overlooked. To address this gap, factors related to bystander behavior in the U.S. and South Korea were examined. One potential predictor is maternal emotion socialization because children understand their own and others’ emotions through interactions with parents (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996). Mothers can model how to react to another’s distress when they respond to their children’s distress. Children whose mothers ignore or criticize their emotions may lack of opportunities to learn empathic responses to other’s emotions. Given that empathy plays an important role in bystander behavior (Nickerson et al., 2008), maternal unsupportive reactions to their children’s emotions were predicted to relate to bystander behavior through child empathy.
Empathy consists of two constructs, personal distress and empathic concern, which lead to different social behaviors (Bateson & Shaw, 1991). Because personal distress focuses on an individual’s own adverse emotions elicited by other’s distress, children with high personal distress may avoid sources of distress. Conversely, empathic concern may lead to prosocial behavior to reduce others’ distress by focusing more on others’ emotions (Davis, 1980). We hypothesized that more maternal unsupportive reactions would be associated with more child personal distress and less empathic concern, which would be related to more bystander behavior. We also expected the pathways would vary depending on culture because emotion-related beliefs are characterized by different values between Western and Eastern cultures, which in turn lead different maternal emotion socialization practices.
Children (Mage=10.93) and their mothers in the U.S. (n=165) and South Korea (n=158) participated in an online survey. Mothers completed the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions to assess maternal unsupportive reactions to their children’s emotions. Children reported on their empathy using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and on their bystander behaviors using the Types of the Conformity Groups in Bullying.
A multi-group analysis was conducted, and the model had acceptable fit, χ2 (16, N=323) =30.74, p=.01, CFI=.94, RMSEA=.08, SRMR=.04, see Figure 1. Children’s personal distress was a significant mediator only in the American sample; more maternal unsupportive reactions were related to more children’s personal distress which was associated with more bystander behavior. In both cultures, children’s empathic concern was a significant mediator; more maternal unsupportive reactions were associated with less empathic concern, which was related to more bystander behavior.
Results of this study identified universal and cultural specific aspects of bystander behavior. The American sample’s significant indirect effect of maternal unsupportive reactions through personal distress suggested that American mothers’ emotion socialization might be associated with children’s self-oriented empathic response, which in turn relates to children’s social behavior. Meanwhile, empathic concern was a significant mediator regardless of culture. The indirect effect of maternal unsupportive reactions through empathic concern highlights the important role of maternal emotion socialization in the development of genuine empathy and social behavior in both cultures.

Authors

• Eunkyung Shin, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia L. Smith, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
  Non-Presenting Author