Bullying in schools is an issue of concern for society as a whole. Families, educators, and researchers are all committed to addressing this phenomenon, which involves sustained immoral behaviors creating imbalances between aggressors and victims. Many bullying situations occur in the presence of other students, who adopt various roles: either enabling the aggressor, defending the victim, or choosing not to intervene.
The Laboratory for Coexistence and Violence Prevention Studies at the University of Cordoba (UCO), headed up by Professor Emeritus Rosario Ortega, has spent decades researching this complex phenomenon. The group´s latest studies place the focus on defense. “We take a longitudinal approach to understand the decision-making process of bystanders witnessing bullying and the psychological variables we must consider to fully understand this highly complex process,” explains Professor Eva Romera.
One such variable is moral courage, the focus of the group’s latest study. As lead author Paula García explains: “Moral courage is a cognitive-moral mechanism that influences bystanders' decision-making in bullying situations.” It goes beyond feeling an emotion “or an impulse that makes us brave. It’s a deliberate action, taken when one is aware that what’s happening is wrong, and one weighs the risks associated with that defense,” Romera said.
The study profiles moral courage and analyzes its relationship with defending behaviors among bullying victims in a sample of over 3,700 students in grades 5–6 (primary school) and the first three years of secondary school (ESO, or compulsory secondary education, in Spain), 540 of whom reported witnessing bullying in recent months. Using structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis, the study demonstrates the link between moral courage and the triggering of prosocial defense behaviors: comforting the victim, reporting incidents to authority figures, and employing conflict-resolution strategies.
“Traditionally, we’ve said that defending victims is important, but we haven’t asked how to do so. Defense can be aggressive, or it can be more prosocial, focused on seeking solutions or asking others for help,” notes Antonio Camacho, another author of the study. Overall, moral courage is more strongly related to prosocial defending attitudes, but subgroup analyses (considering age and gender) reveal that moral courage does relate to aggressive defending in boys and primary school students, with its influence on victim comforting being greater in primary than secondary school.
These findings highlight the relevance of moral courage as a driving force in prosocial defense attitudes, and that “it is important to take this into account, especially to adopt an evolutionary perspective and understand at which ages we need to focus more on this defense, or to help them observe what is happening and why they decide to act or not,” concludes Paula García.
Moral courage training
The data from years of study show that bullying peaks in late childhood or pre-adolescence, during the final years of primary school and the first years of secondary, with a decline starting in the second year of this stage. However, the same does not hold true for cyberbullying, which persists, or even increases. Additionally, this team observes clear awareness at schools and in families and society regarding this phenomenon. Research makes it possible to intervene in classrooms, and many of the studies conducted by LAECOVI are later applied directly in classrooms.
Regarding moral courage, the team has carried out a pilot project in secondary education classrooms in which they tested activities to develop students’ levels of moral courage. “We tested some activities involving practical cases where they had to become aware of the situation they were perceiving and decide whether to act or not. After analyzing the results, we observed that after these exercises, students displayed increased awareness of the phenomenon and were more decisive about acting if faced with such a situation,” García explains.
Reference:
García-Carrera, Paula & Ortega-Ruiz, Rosario & Camacho, Antonio & Félix, Eva. (2025). Coraje moral y conductas de defensa ante el acoso escolar: un estudio longitudinal con escolares de Educación Primaria y Educación Secundaria (Moral courage and defending behaviors in the face of bullying: A longitudinal study with primary and secondary school students). Revista de Psicodidáctica. 500176.10.1016/j.psicod.2025.500176
No comments:
Post a Comment