ArticleHealthcare (Basel, Switzerland)2026
Standing by or Standing up? Victim Ethnicity, Bystander Responses and Psychological Distress in Different Types of Bullying Situations.
Article in Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundBullying represents a complex problem affecting students of all ages. Among the factors that influence it, appraisals of the transgressions and bystanders' responses play a very important role. The present study examined adults' emotional, evaluative, and behavioral responses to hypothetical bullying scenarios varying by bullying type and victim ethnicity. It also explored whether psychological distress was associated with bystanding behaviors as well as previous bullying experiences.
methodsThe study used a mixed 3 × 4 vignette-based design. Victim ethnicity (i.e., Romanian, Roma, or Hungarian) was manipulated between participants, while bullying type was manipulated within participants through four scenarios describing physical, verbal, indirect, and cyberbullying. The final sample included 477 adults aged between 18 and 52 years. Participants appraised each transgression (i.e., empathic reactions, unacceptability), reported their likely bystander behavioral intentions (i.e., defend, ignore, report or join the aggression), completed the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and reported previous bullying experiences as victim, witness, and aggressor.
resultsBullying type was the most consistent factor shaping participants' appraisals as well as bystander reactions. The most tolerated forms were indirect bullying (e.g., highest probability to join the aggression) and verbal bullying (e.g., lowest unacceptability) the least accepted was physical bullying (e.g., lowest probability to join the aggression) while cyberbullying elicited specific patterns (i.e., lower empathy but higher willingness to report the incident). Victim ethnicity had a very limited effect, only concerning reporting intentions: lower for Hungarian targets compared to Romanian. Psychological distress was mainly associated with previous victimization and witnessing, while associations with scenario-based responses were smaller and more specific.
conclusionsThe findings suggest that bystander responses are differentiated across bullying forms and prevention efforts should address subtle, indirect, verbal, and online forms of bullying, as these may be more easily normalized or less directly confronted.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.