Ungdomars motivation till att ingripa i mobbningssituationer

Sammanfattning: The current study focuses on school bullying and investigates what motivates young adolescents to intervene in bullying situations. 279 students in 7th grade participated, of which 243 students were included (140 girls and 103 boys). A vignette was read and questions answered that measured empathy and motivation to intervene in a bullying situation. Correlations, one-way ANOVA and multiple regression analyses investigated the importance of different types of motivation and how the factors; cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, the bully´s and the victim's group affiliation and gender affect motivation to intervene. The result showed that empathy explained the variance for both autonomous and introjected motivation, where emotional empathy had the greatest impact. Girls rated higher than boys on both empathy aspects. No significant correlations between group affiliation and motivation existed, in contrast to previous studies that demonstrated that the victim's and bully´s affiliation to the ingroup or the outgroup is important for intervention. Based on the current study and previous theoretical approach, it is important that interventions against bullying focus on strengthening mainly emotional empathy, but also cognitive empathy and autonomous motivation to encourage young people to interfere more in bullying situations.