Moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy and their associations with defending, unconcerned bystanding, and guilty bystanding in school bullying

Abstract The aim of the present study was to investigate whether moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy were related to defending, unconcerned bystanding, and guilty bystanding in school bullying among pre-adolescent students. In this study, 1168 pre-adolescent students from 74 upper elementary classrooms in 31 schools in Sweden completed a series of self-report scales. Through structural equation modeling, the study found that defending was positively associated with defender self-efficacy and negatively associated with moral disengagement. Unconcerned bystanding was negatively associated with defender self-efficacy and positively associated with moral disengagement. Finally, guilty bystanding was negatively associated with defender self-efficacy and moral disengagement.