Family incivility and cyberbullying in adolescence: A moderated mediation model

Highlights

• Family incivility (FI) was positively associated with cyberbullying (CB).

• Hopelessness mediated the relationship between family incivility and cyberbullying.

• Emotional intelligence moderated the relationship between FI and hopelessness as well as that between FI and CB.

• Being the first to explore the unique effects of FI on adolescents.

• Flourishing the frustration-aggression theory by suggesting a strong link of frustration in real life to CB.

Abstract

Extant research has revealed the influence of family incivility on adults in the work context, leaving the reactions of adolescent victims unexplored. According to the frustration-aggression theory, it is possible that individuals become hopeless after experiencing such chronic low-intensity deviant behaviors in the family, thereby engaging in aggression. Considering adolescents' active participation online and their preference for covert ways to vent negative emotions, we focused on their cyberbullying perpetration rather than offline aggression. The participants were 3030 adolescents (57% girls, M age = 16.65 years) of a high school in China. The results examined the mechanism through which family incivility was significantly related to cyberbullying through the mediation of hopelessness, suggesting a strong link of real-life experience to online behavior, while emotional intelligence acted as a buffer against the relationship between family incivility and hopelessness as well as that between family incivility and cyberbullying. The findings revealed the durative underlying detriment of family incivility, and cyberbullying prevention strategies were proposed. Both theoretical and practical implications of these findings were discussed.

Introduction

Family interactions have attracted considerable attention for a long time due to their significant influences on the development of adolescents, who are in a period of heightened risk (Allen et al., 1994, Turpyn and Chaplin, 2016). Recently, family incivility, a new form of family interactions, has been introduced to the literature, referring to low-intensity deviant interpersonal behaviors that undermine mutual respect in the family (e.g., excluding family members from social activities, doubting the judgment of family members)(Lim & Tai, 2014). Being distinguished from family abuse or aggression, family incivility is frequently ignored in our daily life but is more general and has an enormous underlying impact on the victims in reality. Previous studies have examined that for adult victims, family incivility is negatively related to work outcomes (Bai et al., 2016, Lim and Tai, 2014). However, little is known about how adolescents, who are sensitive to subtle relationship problems (Grych, Raynor, & Fosco, 2004), react to family incivility.

According to the frustration-aggression theory, frustration provokes negative affect, which in turn brings about aggression (Berkowitz, 1983, Berkowitz, 1989, Berkowitz, 1990). From this perspective, ongoing exposure to family incivility consistently displeases adolescents and therefore may provoke them into aggressive actions. Nevertheless, as the anticipated punishment for aggression affects the choice of the target (Berkowitz, 1989), facing the authority of parents and siblings, adolescent victims may give up striking back and be prone to some covert forms of aggression, such as cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is an aggressive behavior through modern technological devices (Slonje & Smith, 2008), which peaks in adolescence (Pabian & Vandebosch, 2014). Despite the potential influence of family incivility on adolescent cyberbullying, no prior research has examined the relationship between them. Therefore, we expand the domain of family incivility and speculate that family incivility is positively correlated with cyberbullying perpetration.

The contributions of the present study are threefold. First of all, although family incivility is found to have a marked influence on adult victims (Bai et al., 2016, Lim and Tai, 2014), adolescent reaction to it is still unrevealed. To explore the adverse effects of family incivility on adolescents, we establish a moderated mediation model based on the frustration-aggression formulation, central to which is hopelessness, a type of negative feelings many adolescents have experienced, while emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between family incivility and hopelessness as well as that between family incivility and cyberbullying. Secondly, the findings empirically support the frustration-aggression theory by demonstrating the mechanism through which frustration such as family incivility is associated with aggression such as cyberbullying, and extend the existing theory by observing the interplay between online and offline behaviors. Thirdly, we seek to aid adolescents in mental health practically from a family perspective. We expect the study of daily behavior in the family can assist in improving the quality of family interactions, affecting the way our children deal with their children, and ultimately protecting our descendants from generation to generation.