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The effectiveness of moral disengagement and social norms as anti-bullying components: A randomized controlled trial
Chloé Tolmatcheff1, Benoit Galand1, Isabelle Roskam1
1Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Abstract:
This three-armed randomized controlled trial examined how moral disengagement and social norms account for change in bullying behavior and their potential as targets of anti-bullying components within separate interventions among 1200 French-speaking Belgian elementary students (48% boys, 9-12 year-olds, 57 classes, nine schools) during 2018-2019 (no ethnicity data available). Mediation analysis revealed that students' moral disengagement successfully decreased (β = -.46), which, in turn, reduced both bullying (β = .33) and outsider behaviors (β = .20), and increased defending (β = -.10). Intervening on social norms decreased bullying (β = -.18), but not through the perceived injunctive class norm as intended. Guidelines to open the "black box" of anti-bullying programs and determine the cost-effectiveness ratio of their components are provided.
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