Fostering victim-defending behaviors among school bullying witnesses: A longitudinal and experimental test of two new strategies for changing behavior

In school bullying, witnesses play a fundamental role because their defensive reactions can stop bullying situations. However, great majority of remain passive despite prodefense personal beliefs. To address this gap between witnesses’ beliefs and behaviors, we developed tested two social psychology strategies, namely, the induced hypocrisy implementation intention. an experimental longitudinal study (N = 101), randomly divided 7th- 8th-grade students into three conditions, control, hypocrisy, or Linear mixed models showed that strategies immediately increased planned defending behaviors as well self-reported at months but with stronger effect for strategy. These new prevention avenues practitioners are discussed according to current approaches.