Being the recipient of severe bullying messages for a period of time is a meaningful predictor of subsequent mental health issues. Employing Goal Understanding Theory, we test an explanation for this association. Specifically, we hypothesize and generally confirm that targets’ adverse emotional reaction and hurt from bullying messages serially mediate the positive association between message severity and depression and general anxiety, depending on the goal understanding of targets (i.e., inferences of upward-mobility, personal-attack, and highlight-differences goals motivating a bully). That is, the mediation of message severity on mental health via emotional reaction and then hurt is present at high (not low) levels of goal inferences. Implications of the communicative processes connecting severe bullying with mental health are discussed.

在一段时间内成为严重欺凌消息的接收者是后续心理健康问题的有意义的预测指标。使用目标理解理论，我们测试了这种关联的解释。具体来说，我们假设并大致确认目标的不良情绪反应和欺凌讯息所造成的伤害会根据目标对目标的理解（例如，向上运动，个人行动的推论）连续介导讯息严重程度与抑郁和一般性焦虑之间的正相关关系。攻击和高亮差异目标，从而激发欺负行为）。也就是说，在目标推断的高（而不是低）水平上，存在着通过情绪反应对消息的严重性进行调解，然后通过情感反应来伤害心理健康的问题。讨论了将严重欺凌与心理健康联系起来的交流过程的含义。