The roles of moral disengagement and basic moral sensitivity in university students' antisocial bystander intentions towards relational bullying

Relational bullying is a prevalent issue in higher education, and students who witness bullying incidents react in prosocial or antisocial ways depending on a complex range of factors. To encourage prosocial and discourage antisocial bystander behaviours in students, it is crucial to understand which factors contribute to aggressively defending others, reinforcing bullying and ignoring bullying. The present study examined associations of traditional predictors of intention in the theory of planned behaviour (TPB; cognitive attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control) and associations of moral determinants (moral disengagement, basic moral sensitivity towards bullying) with the distinct antisocial bystander intentions to aggressively defend a victim, reinforce bullying and ignore bullying in a structural equation model. Additionally, we analysed whether moral disengagement mediates the relationships between basic moral sensitivity towards bullying and the three antisocial intentions when added in a second model. The online sample comprised 419 undergraduate students from the United Kingdom (MAge = 22.76 years, SDAge = 4.02 years; 47.0% male, 50.6% female, 2.4% other). In both models, we found significant associations of the TPB variables with the intentions to reinforce and ignore relational bullying, but not with the intention to aggressively defend the victim. The second model indicates that moral disengagement mediates the relationships between basic moral sensitivity towards bullying and all three antisocial bystander intentions. Our findings highlight the role of moral disengagement and the need to create awareness in students of its underlying processes and their collective responsibility for the well-being of all learners in the higher education learning environment.