After about 15 seconds of waiting, a same age middle school student, who is not from their school, will enter the room and randomly bully one of the two participants. The bullying behavior will include name calling, making fun of their clothing, pushing their papers off the chair, getting in the victim’s personal space, and moving personal items. The bullying behavior will last for two minutes. During the two minute bullying experience, an experimenter will observe the situation through a one-way window and keep track of the defending and assisting behaviors displayed by the bystander (the non-victim). After the two minutes of bullying, the observer will complete the Defending behavior and Assisting behavior rating scales. Once the bullying is complete, participants will be immediately debriefed and provided supports (i.e. counseling), rewards (i.e. choice of a gift card), and the victim will complete the victimization …show more content…
This introduces the possibility of response bias and could be problematic if the students do not respond honestly. Another limitation includes the use of a novel bully although victims of bullying typically know who their perpetrator is. The student participants may behave differently if the bully is an individual in which they know or have dealt with before. Future studies should consider using a known bully among students. A third limitation of the study is that it does not look at all types of bullying behavior. For example, due to ethical and legal reasons, the bullies will not be physically touching the students and most of the bullying behavior will be verbal. Future studies should consider using other methods of manipulating the bullying experience. Finally, due to the option of not completing the study, participants may drop out due to the bullying experience leading to potentially a lower sample