Victim blaming in negative attention bias? The relationship between bullying victimization and depressive symptoms: The role of different negative attention bias and peer support.

BACKGROUND School bullying significantly affects students' mental health, yet research on its impact on depressive symptoms in college students remains limited. This study examines the link between school bullying victimization and depression, focusing on the roles of negative attentional bias and peer support within the frameworks of the social information processing model and self-verification theory. METHODS A total of 5408 college students (aged 16-24) from southern China completed the School Bullying Victimization Questionnaire, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Attention to Negative Information Scale, and Peer Support Scale. A moderated mediation analysis was conducted using Process 4.0 in SPSS. RESULTS School bullying victimization was positively associated with depressive symptoms. Negative attentional bias (self) mediated this relationship, whereas negative attentional bias (other) did not. Peer support moderated both the direct effect of bullying victimization on depression and the latter stage of the mediation model. CONCLUSION This study elucidates the mechanisms linking bullying victimization to depression from a social information processing perspective and underscores the critical role of peer support in mitigating depressive symptoms among college students.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Journal of Psychiatric Research

• Publication date

  2025-03-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.03.041PMID 40154206
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Depression, Anxiety, and Cognitive Distortion among College Students: A Cross-Lagged Prospective Network Study during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

  2024cited by this paper
• The changes in cooperation among strangers in China: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of social dilemmas (1999~2019)

  2024cited by this paper
• The mediating effect of bullying on parental–peer support matching and NSSI behaviour among adolescents

  2024cited by this paper
• The effect of cyberbullying victimization and traditional bullying victimization on suicidal ideation among Chinese female college students: The role of rumination and insomnia.

  2023cited by this paper
• The Social Cognitions of Victims of Bullying: A Systematic Review

  2022cited by this paper
• Attentional Biases in Human Anxiety.

  2022cited by this paper
• Why Does Classroom-Level Victimization Moderate the Association Between Victimization and Depressive Symptoms? The "Healthy Context Paradox" and Two Explanations.

  2021cited by this paper
• Developmental Cascades of Hostile Attribution Bias, Aggressive Behavior, and Peer Victimization in Preadolescence

  2021cited by this paper
• With a little help from my friends: Selective social potentiation of emotion regulation.

  2020cited by this paper
• Global trends in the prevalence and incidence of depression:a systematic review and meta-analysis.

  2020cited by this paper
• Prevalence and correlates of PTSD and depressive symptoms one month after the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in a sample of home-quarantined Chinese university students

  2020cited by this paper
• Reappraising Reappraisal

  2019cited by this paper
• Attentional bias in depression: understanding mechanisms to improve training and treatment.

  2019cited by this paper
• The Differential Victimization Associated With Depression and Anxiety in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Meta-Analysis

  2019cited by this paper
• Cognitive factors associated with depression and anxiety in adolescents: A two-year longitudinal study

  2018cited by this paper
• Depression and hopelessness as risk factors for suicide ideation, attempts and death: meta-analysis of longitudinal studies

  2018cited by this paper
• Resource and extrinsic risk in defining fast life histories of rural Chinese left-behind children

  2018cited by this paper
• Trends in depression prevalence in the USA from 2005 to 2015: widening disparities in vulnerable groups

  2017cited by this paper
• Bullying Perpetration, Victimization, and Demographic Differences in College Students: A Review of the Literature

  2017cited by this paper
• Prevalence of Depression among Chinese University Students: A Meta-Analysis

  2016cited by this paper
• Associations between depression risk, bullying and current smoking among Chinese adolescents: Modulated by gender.

  2016cited by this paper
• Prevalence and Effect of Cyberbullying on Children and Young People: A Scoping Review of Social Media Studies.

  2015cited by this paper
• Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) in the general population.

  2014cited by this paper
• An Investigation Into How Students Respond to Being Victimized by Peer Aggression

  2014cited by this paper
• Bullying at a university: students' experiences of bullying

  2014cited by this paper
• War Zone Stress Interacts With the 5-HTTLPR Polymorphism to Predict the Development of Sustained Attention for Negative Emotion Stimuli in Soldiers Returning From Iraq

  2013cited by this paper
• Demographic, psychological, and school environment correlates of bullying victimization and school hassles in rural youth

  2013cited by this paper
• Peer victimization and school disaffection: exploring the moderation effect of social support and the mediation effect of depression.

  2013cited by this paper
• Relationships among cyberbullying, school bullying, and mental health in Taiwanese adolescents.

  2013cited by this paper
• A systematic review of studies of depression prevalence in university students.

  2013cited by this paper
• College student stressors: a review of the qualitative research.

  2012cited by this paper
• Relational Victimization and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: Moderating Effects of Mother, Father, and Peer Emotional Support

  2011cited by this paper
• Peers increase adolescent risk taking by enhancing activity in the brain's reward circuitry.

  2011cited by this paper
• Selective attention biases of people with depression: positive and negative priming of depression-related information.

  2009cited by this paper
• Association Between Bullying and Psychosomatic Problems: A Meta-analysis

  2009cited by this paper
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

  2008cited by this paper
• Relation between depression and sociodemographic factors

  2007cited by this paper
• Divided we fall: Children's friendships and peer victimization

  2006cited by this paper
• National Cultural Influences on Knowledge Sharing: A Comparison of China and Russia

  2006cited by this paper
• Cognitive tendencies of focusing on positive and negative information

  2006cited by this paper
• Peer Victimization, Cue Interpretation, and Internalizing Symptoms: Preliminary Concurrent and Longitudinal Findings for Children and Adolescents

  2005cited by this paper
• When Asking “Why” Does Not Hurt Distinguishing Rumination From Reflective Processing of Negative Emotions

  2005cited by this paper
• Prospective relations between social support and depression: differential direction of effects for parent and peer support?

  2004cited by this paper
• Prevalence estimation of school bullying with the Olweus Bully Victim Questionnaire

  2003cited by this paper
• One Hundred Years of Social Psychology Quantitatively Described

  2003cited by this paper
• State Laws and Policies to Address Bullying in Schools

  2003cited by this paper
• Selective attention and emotional vulnerability: assessing the causal basis of their association through the experimental manipulation of attentional bias.

  2002cited by this paper
• Coping with stress during childhood and adolescence: problems, progress, and potential in theory and research.

  2001cited by this paper
• Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) in response to job stressors and organizational justice: Some mediator and moderator tests for autonomy and emotions

  2001cited by this paper
• The PHQ-9

  2001cited by this paper
• The PHQ-9: validity of a brief depression severity measure.

  2001cited by this paper
• "Guess what I just heard!": Indirect aggression among teenage girls in Australia

  2000cited by this paper
• Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight.

  2000cited by this paper
• Social Exclusion amongst Adolescent Girls Their self‐esteem and coping strategies

  1998cited by this paper
• Cooperativeness and bully/victim problems among Australian schoolchildren.

  1997cited by this paper
• The Trouble with Change: Self-Verification and Allegiance to the Self

  1997cited by this paper
• Lifetime traumas and mental health: the significance of cumulative adversity.

  1995cited by this paper
• Temperament and attention: orienting toward and away from positive and negative signals.

  1994cited by this paper
• A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children's social adjustment.

  1994cited by this paper
• Age and sex differences in perceptions of networks of personal relationships.

  1992cited by this paper
• Emotion and social information processing.

  1991cited by this paper
• The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support

  1988cited by this paper
• Attentional bias in emotional disorders.

  1986cited by this paper
• Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.

  1985cited by this paper
• Negative self-schemata in clinical depression.

  1983cited by this paper
• At the Research Front*: Cognitive Therapy for Depression

  1979cited by this paper
• A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design.

  1978cited by this paper
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the Fleeting Gleam of Praise Cognitive Processes Underlying Behavioral Reactions to Self-relevant Feedback

  year unknowncited by this paper

• Current status and factors influencing innovative behavior of pediatric nurses: a cross-sectional study.

  2026cites this paper
• Exploring adolescents' mental health, cyberbullying perpetration, and interpersonal relationships: A latent profile and moderation approach.

  2025cites this paper
• Longitudinal Relationships Between Childhood Emotional Maltreatment and Depression in Chinese University Students: The Roles of Attention Bias and Expressive Suppression

  2025cites this paper