Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2022 Oct;61(4):1439-1453. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12544. Epub 2022 May 5.
Studies on cyberbullying have revealed an inconsistent relationship between trait empathy and bystanders' aggressive tendencies towards victims. We believe that these studies have overlooked the role of social exclusion. We infer that high-severity social exclusion suppresses the negative relationship between trait empathy and bystanders' aggressive tendencies. In Study 1, 226 participants read a news report concerning a singer's humiliation by netizens due to lack of talent. The results revealed that trait empathy predicted lower aggressive tendencies towards the singer for participants with fewer experiences of social exclusion. However, trait empathy was unrelated to aggressive tendencies for participants with more experiences of social exclusion. In Study 2, 146 participants were randomly assigned to a low-severity or a high-severity social exclusion condition and were required to recall their experiences of low- or high-severity social exclusion, respectively. The results demonstrated that in the low-severity condition, trait empathy was negatively associated with participants' aggressive tendencies towards the singer and this relationship was mediated by state empathy. However, there was no evidence that the process was at work in the high-severity condition. This study further presents implications and directions for future research.
网络欺凌研究揭示了特质同理心与旁观者对受害者的攻击倾向之间的关系不一致。我们认为，这些研究忽视了社会排斥的作用。我们推断，严重的社会排斥抑制了特质同理心与旁观者攻击倾向之间的负相关关系。在研究 1 中，226 名参与者阅读了一篇关于一名歌手因缺乏才华而被网民羞辱的新闻报道。结果表明，对于社会排斥经历较少的参与者，特质同理心预测对歌手的攻击倾向较低。然而，对于社会排斥经历较多的参与者，特质同理心与攻击倾向无关。在研究 2 中，146 名参与者被随机分配到低严重度或高严重度社会排斥条件，并被要求回忆他们的低严重度或高严重度社会排斥经历。结果表明，在低严重度条件下，特质同理心与参与者对歌手的攻击倾向呈负相关，这种关系受到状态同理心的中介。然而，在高严重度条件下，没有证据表明这一过程在起作用。本研究进一步为未来的研究提供了启示和方向。
