Bullying Norms and Help-seeking: Study 1

The present study aims to examine the mechanisms through which bullying norms affect adolescents’ help-seeking tendencies. We will manipulate adolescents’ injunctive anti-bullying norms (Study 1a: strong injunctive anti-bullying norms vs. weak injunctive anti-bullying norms) and descriptive anti-bullying norms (Study 1b: strong descriptive anti-bullying norms vs. weak descriptive anti-bullying norms), and then assess their help-seeking outcome expectations of victimization (including potential help-seeking benefits, personal/social costs, and situational costs to seeking help) and help-seeking tendencies. We hypothesize that, compared with the weak-norm conditions, strong injunctive anti-bullying norms (Study 1a) and strong descriptive anti-bullying norms (Study 1b) will be associated with stronger help-seeking tendencies among adolescents. This effect is expected to operate through increased expectations of help-seeking benefits and reduced expectations of personal/social and situational costs.