Actively caring to prevent bullying in an elementary school: Prompting and rewarding prosocial behavior.
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.
a Department of Psychology , Virginia Tech , Blacksburg , Virginia , USA.
Shane
S
McCarty
a Department of Psychology , Virginia Tech , Blacksburg , Virginia , USA.
Sophia
S
Teie
b Department of Psychology , Radford University , Radford , Virginia , USA.
Jenna
J
McCutchen
a Department of Psychology , Virginia Tech , Blacksburg , Virginia , USA.
E Scott
ES
Geller
D058445:Bullying / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002648:Child; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D012574:Schools; D012649:Self Concept; D012919:Social Behavior; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D014768:Virginia
Actively caring for people; bullying; prosocial behavior; school intervention