Year of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Name

School Psychology

Department or School/College

Department of Psychology

Committee Chair

Greg R. Machek

Commitee Members

Jacqueline Brown, Anisa Goforth, Bryan Cochran, Emily Sallee

Abstract

Educators must evaluate social interactions between children on a daily basis. Social evaluations are thought to be impacted by cognitive (e.g., perceived controllability) and emotional (e.g., anger, sympathy) processes, and the ways in which teachers respond to bullying incidents may be influenced by their own implicit racial biases. There is inadequate research examining how these variables influence teacher reactions to bullying scenarios. Additionally, within the bullying literature, many studies focus on the bully and/or the victim, with less emphasis on other roles, such as a student defending the victim. Moreover, researchers typically define defenders as a student who gets help or provides emotional support to the victim, with little research on defenders who display aggression toward a bully to defend victims. To fill these gaps in the literature, this study sampled public school teachers (grades K – 12) to investigate their reactions (i.e., perceived controllability of the student, anger, sympathy, and agreement with the student’s actions) to bullying vignettes depicting White and Black aggressive defenders (n = 47). Additionally, this study sought to determine if teacher affect (e.g., anger, sympathy) mediated the relationship between perceived controllability and agreement. Lastly, this study explored if implicit racial biases predicted teachers’ explicit attitudes. Results found that overall, teachers responded more positively to aggressive defenders in comparison to bullies. When comparing teacher reactions to White and Black aggressive defenders, sympathy was the only reaction that was significantly different, with teachers reporting higher sympathy for Black defenders. No significant differences were found in teacher reactions between defenders of bias-based bullying and defenders of general bullying. Significant positive correlations between perceived controllability and teacher agreement were established for both White and Black defenders; however, this relationship was not mediated by teacher affect. Lastly, implicit bias scores did not significantly predict teacher reactions to White and Black defenders. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that teachers evaluate aggression within the context of the bullying scenario. Future studies should further explore teacher reactions to aggressive defenders to determine if perceptions of prosocial behavior help explain why aggression within this context is viewed in a somewhat positive light.

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© Copyright 2025 Charlotte Jane Moss