Choosing to get involved: Examining the psychological mechanisms underlying bystander intervention in cyberbullying

Objective: Bystander intervention plays a critical role in cyberbullying mitigation. However, cyberbystanders can be reluctant to take action and offer help when encountering cyberbullying. Drawing upon the arousal:cost–reward model, this study explored how varying levels of cyberbullying severity impacted cyberbystanders’ empathic distress and cost–reward assessment and how such affective and cognitive responses, in turn, predicted their different intervening behaviors. Method: An online experiment with a 2 (cyberbullying severity: low vs. high) × 2 (cyberbullying scenario: game vs. weight) between-subjects factorial design was conducted. A total of 400 U.S. adults participated in the experiment. Results: The results showed that exposure to a fictitious cyberbullying incident with higher severity induced greater empathic distress, which subsequently reinforced anticipated guilt for not helping and an anticipated emotional benefit from helping. Such anticipation of guilt and emotional benefits ultimately motivated the cyberbystanders to intervene directly and indirectly. Conclusions: The findings of this study provide an empirical basis for the theoretical propositions of the arousal:cost–reward model in online contexts and highlight the critical role of empathic distress in cyberbystander intervention. They also demonstrate the persistence of cost–reward assessment in cyberbystander intervention and illustrate the dynamics and underlying processes of direct and indirect interventions.