Architecture of Aggression in Cyberspace. Testing Cyber Social Deviance in Law School Students Utilizing the Bryant-Smith Aggression Scales

• In Event: Violence, Aggression, and Hate Online

Abstract

The research project utilized the Bryant-Smith aggression questionnaire (Bryant & Smith, 2001) translated and adapted in Hungary (Gerevich et al., 2007). In order to test whether and how violence transforms in online social networking sites we included examples in the questionnaire offering solutions for different hypothetical cases occurring online. (Kiss, 2017)
We tested the online aggression-violence scale on a sample of young adults (aged 19-24) studying in law schools throughout Hungary.
Our research showed that prevalence and levels of aggression and its manifestation in violence in the online world are more severe than in offline social relations, whether in personalities with a low, or those with a high score of aggression. Additionally, personalities with a low level of aggression (low verbal, physical, anger expression or low-level hostile personalities) would be willing to engage in more severe violent activities. Even though we tested the aggression questionnaire on the sample of law school students who might be more aware that online hostile acts are disgraced, the data allowed us to observe a set of a significantly more intense and severe deviant social acts online compared to the offline world that justifies our hypothesis of cyberspace being a catalyst of social violence.

Authors

• Katalin Parti, Hungarian Institute of Criminology

• Tibor Kiss, National University of Public Service