How students react to different cyberbullying events: Past experience, judgment, perceived seriousness, helping behavior and the effect of online disinhibition

doi:10.1016/j.chb.2020.106338

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 110, September 2020, 106338

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106338 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Boys are more likely to bully others on the Internet than girls.
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Junior high school students are more willing to help victims than university students in denigration and exclusion events.
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Perception of seriousness and toxic disinhibition are common predictors for cyberbullying.
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Even under the real-name system, the disinhibition effect still works.

Abstract

This study designed three scenarios related to cyberbullying (CB) to examine the relationship between self-reported CB experience, overall judgment of CB, perception of CB seriousness, helping behavior, and two types of online disinhibition (benign and toxic). A total of 415 Chinese students in three different educational stages (junior high school, senior high school and university) completed a questionnaire. The results showed that compared to girls, boys were more likely to bully others on the Internet, and they perceived the toxic disinhibition effect more strongly. In contrast, girls more easily recognized the behaviors that occurred in harassment and denigration scenarios as bullying instances, and they tended to have strong judgments of these behaviors. Although no gender difference was observed in helping behavior, junior high school students had higher intentions to protect victims than university students in denigration and exclusion scenarios. Correlation analysis revealed that almost all variables were closely connected with each other, and the regression models of our research variables effectively predicted three forms of CB. Perception of seriousness and toxic disinhibition were common predictors in these scenarios. Based on the results, suggestions for reducing bullying incidents and future research directions are provided.

Section snippets

Funding

This study was sponsored by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant number 2018ECNU-HLYT019).

The status quo of cyberbullying in China and the demographic characteristics of bullies and victims

With the popularity of computers and networks in China, the risk behaviors generated by Internet use have begun to attract the attention of Chinese researchers. Researchers have increasingly explored the phenomenon of Chinese students' cyberbullying. In recent studies, Li, Luo, Lin, and Shadiev (2018) examined the relationship between Internet use activities and bullying experience with 2327 Chinese students (aged 9–22 years) and found that 13.9% of students were involved in at least one

Sample

This study adopted convenience sampling and conducted questionnaires in the form of network testing. Snowball sampling was used with friends, and students were recruited through online social groups. Recruitment links were provided under the recruitment instructions to facilitate interested parties to directly open the webpage to provide responses. The webpage explained the purpose of the study, the way it would be conducted, and the time for responding. The content clearly conveyed that the

The differences in gender and educational stages between cyberbullying experience, helping behavior, perceived seriousness, judgment and online disinhibition

Table 2 shows the average mean scores and SD for all research variables. As observed, the scores in the three types of cyberbullying experiences were quite low.

Boys were generally more likely than girls to bully others in the form of harassment (t = 4.12, p < .001), denigration (t = 4.40, p < .001) and exclusion (t = 2.50, p = .013) and were more deeply affected by toxic disinhibition (t = 5.35, p < .001). Girls were more likely to view the incidents described in the harassment (t = −3.29, p

Discussion

The average score of bullying in this study is low, suggesting that cyberbullying was not a prevalent phenomenon among our Chinese participants. Unlike traditional bullying, individuals cannot avoid cyberbullying attacks by avoiding contact with a bully online. The harm caused by cyberbullying to victims is more serious than the harm caused by traditional bullying in terms of depth and breadth. A systematic review and meta-analysis of cyber-victimization and educational outcomes for adolescents

Conclusion

This study examined the multiple relationships between individual characteristics, helping behavior, perception of cyberbullying seriousness, judgment, online disinhibition and cyberbullying experience. Specifically, we found that gender differences existed in perception of seriousness and cyberbullying experience across three scenarios. There were also gender differences in levels of toxic disinhibition. Students from different educational stages displayed dissimilar tendencies to protect

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Chiao Ling Huang: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation, Software, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Sining Zhang: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Methodology, Writing - original draft. Shu Ching Yang: Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

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Online disinhibition and adolescent cyberbullying: A systematic review
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There has been a growing focus on researching adolescent cyberbullying in recent years. Increasing studies highlight the role of online risk factors—online disinhibition and its specific characteristics—in cyberbullying among adolescents. Systematic searches were performed in MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycArticles, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. There were 837 papers in total, 410 of which were non-duplicated, and 15 were ultimately included. Based on the current empirical findings, it has been observed that a heightened perception of online disinhibition corresponds with an increased likelihood of engaging in cyberbullying activities. In addition to the direct effect of online disinhibition on cyberbullying, research also found that online disinhibition functioned through moral disengagement and low self-control to influence cyberbullying. Furthermore, the effects of specific characteristics of online disinhibition on cyberbullying were also investigated. However, most studies (six out of seven) merely focused on the effects of anonymity on cyberbullying, and the results were inconsistent. Additionally, the effects of perception of invisibility and asynchrony on cyberbullying were also examined in limited research. The results showed that online invisibility had no effect on cyberbullying. Asynchrony contributed to cyberbullying directly and indirectly through moral disengagement. Further research is required to investigate the impacts of solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimizing authority on the occurrence of cyberbullying. These findings are discussed, and practical as well as policy implications and guidelines for future studies are proposed.
What you think is a joke is actually cyberbullying: The effects of ethical dissonance, event judgment and humor style on cyberbullying behavior
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This study examines the roles that gender, family economics, ethical dissonance, event judgment, and humor style play in cyberbullying. This cross-sectional study was conducted through an online survey, and 360 Chinese college students participated. The results show that boys have more cyberbullying (flaming) experience than girls and are more likely to use aggressive humor in daily life; girls feel more ethical dissonance than boys in denigration events, are more likely to correctly judge this as bullying, and more often use self-enhancing humor. Students from well-off families are more likely to use affiliative humor than students from moderate and disadvantaged financial situations; students from moderate and well-off families are more likely to correctly identify denigration as bullying behavior than students from economically disadvantaged families; and students from economically disadvantaged families perceive a higher level of ethical dissonance in flaming events. In addition, the variables were correlated with each other to a certain extent and significantly jointly predicted the three types of cyberbullying behaviors; event judgment and aggressive humor were the common predictors.
Sex, age and cyber-victimization: A meta-analysis.
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Citation Excerpt :
Therefore, and despite the small difference found on the basis of age, there is a great variety of results, being the North American culture the only one that contributes to explain the age differences in cyberbullying. On the other hand, and despite the fact that they have not been the subject of statistical analysis, there are a series of variables that have been considered by the authors of the studies included in this meta-analysis such as family, individual differences and Internet consumption that deserve reflection and future study (Baldry et al., 2019; Baumgartner et al., 2014; Huang et al., 2020; Jetelina et al., 2019; Quintana-Orts & Rey, 2018; Turliuc et al., 2020). The meta-analysis carried out has led to the conclusion that the effect sizes, although significant, are low for both sex and age.
Cyberbulling is one of the biggest challenges the school faces. However, the lack of coherence between the data of the literature review makes it necessary to consider which elements are the ones that truly lead to the appearance of cyber-victimization. Through the meta-analysis methodology, it has been tried to clarify the role of sex (k = 41 samples, n = 176,658 adolescents) and age (k = 45 samples, n = 238,977 adolescents) in cyber-victimization. The effect size for the random model is small for both sex (r = 0.058; p < 0.00, 95% CI = 0.090; 3.45) and for age (r = 0.094; p = 0.004; 95% CI = 0.015; 2.910). Indications of significant differences in sex are observed, with women being the most affected. However, the results of the meta-regression have shown how the North American culture plays a key role in age as a moderating variable in relation to the rest of continental cultures. These results support the conclusion that age and sex represent variables that influence cyber-victimization. More specifically, there is a positive relationship between age and cybervictimization, so that the older the age, the higher the cybervictimization, but this is negatively mediated by the American culture. At the same time, some socio-contextual characteristics also seem to have effects on this aspect. Considering this, some important practical implications emerge related to the need to address the study, care and prevention of cyber-victimization as well as any form of violence that occurs inside and outside the classroom.
Cyberbullying experience and bystander behavior in cyberbullying incidents: The serial mediating roles of perceived incident severity and empathy
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Citation Excerpt :
However, compared with other groups (i.e., victims only and non-involvers), individuals with cyberbullying perpetration experience, including perpetrator only and perpetrator-victims, have stronger intentions to perform negative behavior and weaker intentions to perform positive behavior in cyberbullying. The result is consistent with previous studies revealing that the experience of cyberbullying negatively predicts positive bystander behavior (e.g., helping behavior) (Huang et al., 2020) and that the experience of bullying as a perpetrator-victim is incapable of empathy for the victim in traditional bullying (Perren et al., 2012). This may be because they score higher on moral disengagement.
Bystanders' behavior can influence the development of cyberbullying incidents. Previous research has demonstrated cyberbullying experience as a significant predictor of bystander behavior in cyberbullying. However, few studies have explored the explanatory mechanisms underlying this relationship. To fill in this gap, the present study investigated whether perceived incident severity and empathy mediated the relationship between cyberbullying experience and bystander behavior in cyberbullying. A total of 434 college students (female: 65.4%) aged from 18 to 25 years old (M = 20.42; SD = 1.84) were recruited to complete an online survey measuring the variables of interest. Qualitative analysis showed that individuals who experienced cyberbullying perpetration only and those who experienced both cyberbullying perpetration and victimization had stronger intentions to engage in negative bystander behavior. Besides, cyberbullying perpetration experience positively predicted negative bystander behavior, whereas cyberbullying victimization experience did not predict any type of bystander behavior. Perceived incident severity played a mediating role between cyberbullying perpetration experience and all types of bystander behavior except remaining an outsider. Empathy played a mediating role between cyberbullying perpetration experience and negative bystander behavior. Perceived incident severity and empathy played the serial mediating roles between cyberbullying perpetration experience and negative bystander behavior. When analyzing the two components of empathy, the results showed that cognitive and affective empathy had different roles in explaining the relationship between cyberbullying experience and bystander behavior. The gender differences in the mediating effects were also demonstrated. The results of the study can provide empirical support for formulating the cyberbullying intervention measures based on the bystanders’ perspective.
Children and adolescents’ understanding of traditional and cyberbullying
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It is known that perceived seriousness of an incident influences bystander actions (Song & Oh, 2018) and that girls evaluate bullying incidents more seriously than boys (Huang et al., 2019). It has been hypothesized that this is because girls could be more empathic or that they recognize more incidents as bullying than boys (Huang et al., 2020). Younger children (aged 6–8 and 9–11) also consistently perceived both traditional and cyberbullying situations as significantly more serious than older adolescents (aged 12–14 and 15–18) across both traditional and cyberbullying scenarios.
Bullying among children and adolescents is a significant and serious social phenomenon that has continued to be a problem despite the implementation of current intervention programs. The words bullying and cyberbullying have been controversial terms with researchers and the general public holding different views of what they mean. The problem is that these differences could potentially lead to inconsistent responding approaches and impact the effectiveness of prevention and intervention measures. Previous research has found that parents and teachers may have a different understanding of the key concepts of bullying and cyberbullying than researchers and have difficulty in applying these definitions to complex real-life scenarios. However, there are an extremely limited number of studies that have investigated students’ understanding of bullying applied to real-life scenarios and even scarcer studies examining young people’s understanding of cyberbullying applied to complex scenarios. The current study thus used a scenario-based questionnaire which was constructed using the Delphi method (that is, a consensus of experts) to examine children and adolescents’ ability to accurately identify bullying and cyberbullying situations from non-bullying situations and their perceived seriousness of these situations. The impact of age and gender on identification and the level of serious of bullying scenarios was also examined. Results indicated that children and adolescents have a limited ability to apply a given standard researchers’ bullying and cyberbullying definition to real life scenarios. Findings also demonstrated that young people’s abilities differed significantly depending on their age, but not on their gender. Girls perceived both traditional and cyberbullying scenarios as more serious than boys, and the perceived level of seriousness also differed significantly based on their age.
Does mindfulness reduce trolling? The relationship between trait mindfulness and online trolling: The mediating role of anger rumination and the moderating role of online disinhibition
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Although trait mindfulness may have direct and indirect effects on online trolling through anger rumination, not all individuals experience this effect equally. Online disinhibition is an important risk factor for various online antisocial behaviours, such as cyberaggression, cyberhate, and cyberbullying (Huang et al., 2020; Kurek et al., 2019; Wachs and Wright, 2019). Therefore, we further propose online disinhibition as a moderator that can affect the direct and indirect effects of trait mindfulness on online trolling.
Online trolling is a highly prevalent online antisocial behaviour that has recently received increasing attention because of its potentially destructive consequences. The current study aimed to examine whether trait mindfulness was negatively related to online trolling and whether anger rumination mediated this relationship. We further examined whether online disinhibition moderated the direct and indirect relation between trait mindfulness and online trolling.
A total of 1303 Chinese college students completed the measurements of trait mindfulness, anger rumination, online disinhibition, and online trolling. Moderated mediation analysis was performed to examine the relationships between these variables.
After controlling for sex, the results showed that trait mindfulness was negatively related to online trolling and that this relationship was partially mediated by anger rumination. Moreover, the effect of anger rumination on online trolling was strengthened when online disinhibition was high.
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Individuals with trait mindfulness are less likely to ruminate anger and further express less online trolling. Online disinhibition serves as a risk factor for online trolling. Interventions targeting trait mindfulness, anger rumination, and online disinhibition might aid prevention strategies.

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Full length articleHow students react to different cyberbullying events: Past experience, judgment, perceived seriousness, helping behavior and the effect of online disinhibition

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Funding

The status quo of cyberbullying in China and the demographic characteristics of bullies and victims

Sample

The differences in gender and educational stages between cyberbullying experience, helping behavior, perceived seriousness, judgment and online disinhibition

Discussion

Conclusion

CRediT authorship contribution statement

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A meta-analysis of sex differences in cyber-bullying behavior: The Moderating Role of Age

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Cyberbullying among adolescent bystanders: Role of the communication medium, form of violence, and empathy

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology

A scoping review on studies of cyberbullying prevalence among adolescents

Trauma, Violence, & Abuse

Full length article
How students react to different cyberbullying events: Past experience, judgment, perceived seriousness, helping behavior and the effect of online disinhibition