Actively caring to prevent bullying in an elementary school: Prompting and rewarding prosocial behavior

Abstract

This field study evaluated the impact of an intervention designed to prevent bullying among elementary-school students by prompting and rewarding prosocial behavior. More specifically, teachers of 404 second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students from an elementary school in northeast Virginia asked their students to look out for other students' prosocial behaviors (termed "actively caring") and to submit their stories about actively caring. At the start of every class day, the teachers read three of these stories and recognized one story and the two associated students (i.e., the observer and the performer) by providing each with a wristband engraved with "Actively Caring for People." For six consecutive Fridays, students reported their observations of bullying and completed a single item estimate of self-esteem. Weekly surveys revealed reductions in "being bullied" and "bullying others," as well as an increase in self-esteem.

Changes in Bullying in Relation to Friends, Competitiveness, and Self-Worth

“…An interesting alternative is to promote and reward prosocial behaviours. Specifically, McCarty, Teie, McCutchen, and Geller (2016) found that prompting and reinforcing caring behaviour over a 6-week intervention not only reduced bullying but also increased the self-worth of upper level elementary students (i.e., Grades 3-6) as a positive side-effect. Provided that engagement in prosocial behaviour has been positively associated with peer acceptance (Layous, Nelson, Oberle, Schonert-Reichl, & Lyubomirsky, 2012), promoting prosocial behaviours might be a promising approach to reduce bullying by increasing self-worth, establishing friendship and lowering competitions.…”

The Differential Victimization Associated With Depression and Anxiety in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Meta-Analysis

“…Evidence from 63 countries revealed that collectivistic countries have higher empathy than individualistic countries and that country-level empathy was positively associated with country-level prosocial behaviors, agreeableness, conscientiousness, self-esteem, and subjective well-being (Chopik, Brien, & Konrath, 2017). Therefore, as these country-level variables may buffer the negative effects of bullying (McCarty, Teie, McCutchen, & Geller, 2016; Pfetsch, 2017; Plopa, Plopa, & Skuzinska, 2017), this may explain the different effect sizes between Europe and North America. Contrary to the result of the current meta-analysis, Peluchette, Karl, Wood, and Williams (2015) found that young Australian adults were significantly more likely to engage in risky social networking practices and experience both mild and harsh forms of cyberbullying than the U.S. participants.…”

Improving prosocial behavior through virtual media based on religious values in elementary school students

“…Adaptive mal behavior that appears can be reduced by strengthening prosocial behavior (Barón et al, 2018). Prosocial behavior can prevent bullying or other aggressive behavior among elementary school students (Grossman et al, 1997;McCarty et al, 2016). Strengthening and character building, especially prosocial behavior, should ideally be carried out since elementary school age (Chandler, 2006;Muslihati, 2019).…”