Serious Game-based Psychosocial Intervention to Foster Prosociality in Cyberbullying Bystanders

Abstract

Bystanders of cyberbullying play an important role in the resolution of such situations and therefore, it is beneficial to promote self-regulation strategies that enable them to engage in prosocial behavior in these contexts. We propose that serious game-based psychosocial interventions with profile-based social agents can encourage prosocial bystander behavior in cyberbullying. A pilot quasi-experimental study with repeated and pre/post measurements was performed. We randomly assigned 194 7th and 8th graders to three conditions, namely experimental condition (n = 103, Mage = 13.91, SD = 1.02, 53.3% male); alternative condition (n = 37, Mage = 14, SD = 0.86, 54.1% female) and control condition (n = 54, Mage = 13.92, SD = 0.85, 50.9% female). An analysis of covariance showed that players revealed higher levels of prosocial assertive behavior when compared to other participants. Through multilevel modelling of longitudinal log-file data, we found that those who did not experience the game tended to interpret the cyberbullying situations more as non-serious, avoid assuming responsibility for intervening, and engage in aggressive behavior toward the victim. Players tended to support more and were less aggressive with victims from their in-group than those from the out-group. Insights for the development of games to promote prosocial behavior in bystanders of cyberbullying are presented.

Keywords

• cyberbullying bystanders
• self-regulation
• in-group and out-group social agents
• serious games