What Makes Adolescents Defend Others Against Cyberhate? Insights from the Normative Social Behavior, Social Learning, and Planned Behavior Theories.

Most adolescents experience cyberhate primarily as bystanders. Understanding their behavior, particularly their defending behaviors, is crucial to mitigate the phenomenon and its negative effects. While prior studies have explored factors influencing these responses, further research is needed to understand how these factors interact within robust theoretical frameworks. To address this gap, this study examined adolescents' defending behaviors to cyberhate through three psychological theories: (1) the Theory of Normative Social Behavior (TNSB; social norms); (2) Social Learning Theory (SLT; social norms, self-efficacy, prior victimization and perpetration experiences, and motivators such as the need for online popularity); and (3) the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; attitude towards helping, perceived control, subjective norms and intention to help). A total of 2539 Spanish secondary school students (49.1% boys, 49.2% girls, and 1.7% others) aged 11-18 years (M = 14.07, SD = 1.39) participated filling a self-reported survey. Three structural equation models were estimated to test the specific variables of each theoretical framework while controlling for gender and age. Results revealed that all three models significantly explained defensive behaviors. Across the models, explained variance reached up to 50.8%. The most relevant factors were subjective norms, injunctive norms from friends, family, and teachers, and perceived self-efficacy. Girls and younger students were more likely to react defensively. This study represents a clear advance in the understanding of defensive behavior in the face of cyberhate, both in a theoretical and practical framework and thus contributes to optimizing the holistic approach to this emerging phenomenon in virtual contexts.