Abstract: In the context of school bullying, seeking help from bystanders is an effective strategy to stop bullying and mitigate its negative consequences. Nevertheless, approximately 55% of victims do not seek help, and the reasons for this hesitation remain unclear. One possible explanation is that people often underestimate others’ willingness to intervene; in the context of bullying, such hesitation may stem from victims’ underestimation of bystanders’ defending intentions. Across four experiments, this study systematically examined whether individuals, from the victim perspective, underestimate bystanders’ willingness to defend them and how this misprediction influences their willingness to seek help. We further explored potential methods to reduce this misprediction.
In Study 1a (N = 80), participants were assigned to either a victim perspective or a bystander perspective group. After reading scenarios involving physical bullying, participants reported bystanders’ willingness to defend the victim from both perspectives. Building on Study 1a, Study 1b (N = 218) expanded the design to all types of bullying (physical, verbal, relational, and cyberbullying) and included participants of different genders (male and female) and educational stages (elementary, middle, and high school). In Study 2a (N = 238), participants in the victim perspective group additionally reported their own willingness to seek help. Finally, in Study 2b (N = 432), we manipulated the mispredictions of participants in the victim perspective group through contextual cues to examine whether altering the misprediction influenced their willingness to seek help.
The four experiments collectively demonstrated the presence and impact of victims’ mispredictions regarding bystanders’ defending intentions. Specifically, individuals from the victim perspective consistently underestimated bystanders’ willingness to defend (Study 1a). This misprediction was robust across different bullying types, genders, and educational stages (Study 1b). Furthermore, these mispredictions significantly and negatively predicted willingness to seek help: the greater the underestimation of bystanders’ defending intentions, the lower the victims’ willingness to seek help (Study 2a). Notably, mispredictions were malleable: when participants from the victim perspective received information cues indicating that individuals often underestimate or overestimate others’ willingness to help, their mispredictions decreased or increased accordingly, leading to corresponding change in willingness to seek help (Study 2b).
This study introduces the concept of misprediction into the school bullying context, confirming that underestimating bystanders’ willingness to defend is a key reason victims hesitate to seek help. Moreover, it reveals that providing contextual cues can effectively reduce this underestimation and increase victims’ likelihood of seeking help. These findings offer a novel scientific explanation for bullying victims’ reluctance to seek help and suggest an intervention paradigm to enhance willingness to seek help effectively.

Key words: school bullying, victims, bystanders, misprediction, willingness to seek help