SDTIC Community Spotlight Series! March 2025
Serengeti Ayhan
Dear SDTIC community,
The Communications Team is working on keeping us connected with each other through our Community Spotlight Series (https://www.socialdomaintheory.com/community/spotlight). Each Spotlight will feature two researchers (one junior, one senior) from our community and shine a light on their latest projects, partnerships, and ideas. We hope this fuels collaboration and illuminates the broad scope of SDTIC researchers' interests and passions! If you would like to nominate someone or yourself for this Spotlight Series, feel free to email [social.domain...@gmail.com].
March 2025 SDTIC Spotlights: Seçil Gönültaş & Serengeti Ayhan
What is your latest /major research project? Or what research questions are you wrestling with right now?
One of my latest projects consists of a series of studies looking at bystander responses to bullying in both intra and intergroup contexts by also examining social cognition and intergroup factors in children and adolescents. Our research questions were related to understanding the correlates of Turkish youth’s bystander responses to intergroup bullying of Syrian youth and ultimately to increase Turkish youth’s motivation to intervene and to stand against bullying together across two subsequent major field studies in the intergroup context in Turkey.
What new area of interest are you diving into?
As a new research area for me, I’m diving into the area of civic engagement in adolescents and children, particularly in environmental and social issues like gender equality. Civic engagement can be considered as a form of moral consideration as it involves cultivating a sense of justice, empathy, and ethical responsibility. Within this research line, I am very interested in understanding how children and adolescents develop a sense of agency, participate in activism, and contribute to meaningful change in their communities. I am also interested in learning how youth activists can be role models for children and adolescents by understanding what motivates them, the barriers they face, and the impact of their involvement can help create better programs to support their engagement.
What projects are your students working on?
We have several research lines emerging around morality, intergroup contexts, and social cognition. My second-year Master’s student, Serengeti Ayhan, is working on a project to understand adolescents’ bystander responses to gender-based humor. Bilge Sena Çam, a first-year Master’s student is working on a project that examines adolescents’ perceptions and attitudes toward artificial intelligence-based tools in moral contexts. Lastly, Semiha Ömür, a first-year Master’s student, is interested in research related to the effect of parents’ attitudes towards bullying and bystander defending in children’s bystander responses to bullying.
What is your latest /major research project? Or what research questions are you wrestling with right now?
Right now, my major research project is my Master’s thesis, where I’m investigating how adolescents respond to gender-based humor and social exclusion in an E-Sports context. Specifically, I’m exploring the role of peer norms and intentionality in shaping bystander responses. I’m also examining how factors like stereotype awareness, humor comprehension, theory of mind, and prior experiences with cyberbullying influence adolescents’ reasoning and bystander intervention behaviors.
What new area of interest are you diving into?
I’ve recently become interested in prosocial risk-taking—particularly how children and adolescents decide to challenge unfair social norms even when doing so carries personal or social costs. I want to understand what motivates young people to take these risks in contexts like intergroup bullying and whether factors like empathy, moral reasoning, and perceived group norms influence these decisions.
What new collaboration have you begun?
I’ve been collaborating on a cross-cultural project led by my colleague Alex Carter and Dr. Luke McGuire, examining children’s speciesism—how they perceive and morally evaluate the treatment of different animals across cultures. We will begin data collection soon, and I’m excited about this project because it allows me to apply my background in social and moral development to a new context, exploring how children’s attitudes toward animals relate to their broader beliefs about fairness.
Sincerely,
SDTIC Communications Team