The Relationship Between The Belief In A Just World And The Protective Behavior Of Junior High School Students: The Mediating Role Of Moral Evasion

Belief in a just world refers to that people believe they live in a just world,get what they get and what they deserve.This belief plays a protective role when young people are threatened with injustice.Faced with the unfair incident of school bullying,some individuals prevent the expansion of bullying by protecting their bullied peers,which not only plays an effective intervention role in school bullying,but also maintains their belief in a just world.Previous studies have shown that bullying behavior and protective behavior are closely related to moral disengagement in moral development of teenagers.As an individual's tendency of moral cognition,the low moral disengagement individuals are more likely to protect the bullied peers than those with high moral disengagement individuals.The present study was divided into two parts and four researches.The first part examined the relationship between belief in a just world and defending behaviors through experimental method,included the study of unconscious goals priming and the implicit experimental study of IAT.Study 1 used the unconscious goals priming method to investigate the effects of different levels of perceived justice on the defending behavior,the results showed that: defending behavior of junior school student was influenced by belief in a just world,the defending behavior of justice priming group was higher than injustice priming group.Study 2 adopted the implicit association test to explore the relationship between the groups with high or low belief in a just world and implicit protection tendency.The results showed that: the belief in a just world of junior high school students matched the tendency of implicit protection.Specifically the implicit connection of “public words and protective words” and “unjustice words and nonprotective words” was closer than that of “public words and non-protective words” and “nonprotective words and protective words”.In the second part,we further explored the relationship among belief in a just world,moral disengagement and defending behavior through questionnaires.We firstly revised the Chinese“Participant Role Scale” and then discussed the relationships among belief in a just world,moral disengagement and defending behavior.Study 3 aimed to introduce and revise the Chinese“Participant Role Scale” to lay the foundation of further researches.The reliability and validity of revised Chinese “Participant Role Scale” was available and can be used as an assessment tool for the role of domestic participants.Study 4 investigated the relationships among belief in a just world,defending behavior,and moral disengagement.The results showed that: belief in a just world could be used to significantly and positively predict the junior school students 'defending behavior,moral disengagement has partially mediating effect between belief in a justworld and defending behavior.The above results indicated that the more junior high school students believed that they were in a fair world with equal efforts and gains,the more they inclined to protect their bullied peers in the context of school bullying.The results enlightened us that school education should pay attention to the cultivation of moral quality and sense of responsibility during junior school students.If we praise and encourage defending behaviors of school bullying actively,the protectors could experience the sense of justice brought by their own behaviors,which could also enable bystanders to change their roles from passive bystanders to active protectors of bullied peers under the influence of positive substitution reinforcement.All of this would further deepen the tendency of junior high school students to protect bullied peers,thus playing a certain degree of intervention role in school bullying.Actively praise and encourage defending behaviors in school bullying,so that the protectors can experience the sense of justice brought by their own behaviors;it also enables bystanders to change from passive bystander to active protection of bullied peers under the positive substitution reinforcement,deepening the tendency of junior high school students to protect bullied peers,thus playing a certain degree of intervention role in school bullying.