THE INFLUENCE OF MORAL FACTORS ON BULLYING BEHAVIORS IN ADOLESCENCE: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND PROPOSAL FOR A VR INTERVENTION TO PROMOTE PERSPECTIVE-TAKING SKILLS

Abstract

In the last decades, the widespread bullying within schools has become a global problem. Cyberbullying, especially, has known a rapid growth. In the process of understanding the factors that influence bullying behaviors, researchers have turned towards investigating the moral factors, such as "moral disengagement" (MD; Menesini et al., 2003), which is thought to contribute to the reason why, some individuals, although they express disgust and anger in response to bullying behavior and hold the belief that intervening is the right thing to do, they do not intervene in bullying situations. The objective of this research is to propose a VR based intervention, aimed at increasing prosocial behavior in bullies by improving perspective taking-skills and empathy concern. During the interactive VR training simulation program, participants will take their own perspective or the perspective of the partner in virtual reality, being instructed to try and understand their mental states. Furthermore, the situations encountered are meant to trigger feelings of disgust, anger or elevation, which is elicited by witnessing acts of moral goodness, in contrast to neutral situations, in a randomized control trial, in order to test their efficacy. By increasing the propensity to take the perspective of their partner and the empathy concern capacity, we aim to decrease the process of moral disengagement, especially in bullying and cyberbullying phenomena and increase prosocial behavior in adolescents. Further theoretical considerations of the moral emotions in phenomena such as bullying and additional utility of virtual reality in promoting social behavior among adolescents and young adults will be discussed.