Witnessing Workplace Bullying in VR in the Context of Construction Safety: Comparing Preparatory Approaches for Social Orientation

<title>Abstract</title> <p> Virtual Reality (VR) safety training often struggles to address the social dimensions of workplace safety, particularly regarding workplace bullying on construction sites. To reduce trainee distress, we adopted a witness-perspective approach and introduced Preparatory Approaches for Social Orientation (PASO), which refer to pre-VR interventions focusing on social-norm orientation. Based on a three-condition study ( <italic>N</italic>  = 68), we examined the influence of three PASO variants (Reflective Priming only, Instructional Framing only, and their combination) on: (1) general attitudes toward safety-related social norms and (2) contextual bystander attitudes within a VR-simulated workplace bullying scenario. We conclude that: first, the effects of PASO is contingent upon the interaction between perceived closeness to the virtual victim and social presence in VR; second, under high-social-presence conditions, reflective-priming-only PASO exerts the most significant inhibitory effect on destructive bystander intention for workers with low initial closeness. This study demonstrates that, with the appropriate trainee/viewer preparation, VR can be used for addressing workplace bullying. The findings show that positioning workplace social dynamics among workers as safety-relevant factors—when coupled with high social presence—is an effective means to shape both general and contextual social-relevant safety awareness among workers. This provides design implications for the development of VR safety training systems that prioritize social relationships to address complex interpersonal risks such as workplace bullying. </p>