Poster #242 - Social cognitive predictors of cyberbullying: Media creation and forwarding behavior

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Cyberbullying occurs when an individual intentionally and repeatedly targets with aggression in the digital context others who cannot defend themselves (Kowalski et al., 2014). Certain social-cognitive factors including moral disengagement may predict cyberbullying through creating or forwarding harmful media content. Moral disengagement occurs when individuals disengage from self-sanctions against behavior that could harm others (Bandura et al., 1996). Further, bystanders who assist cyberbullying perpetrators can exacerbate the harm toward victims by condoning the perpetrator’s behavior, and increasing the value of the cyberbullying media via forwarding it.
The goals of this study were to evaluate the effects of social-cognitive factors (cyberbullying moral disengagement and cognitive autonomy) on different forms of cyberbullying (overt, relational, and forwarding overt and relational cyberbullying).
Participants were 422 U.S. undergraduate students (301 women, 118 men). Approximately 51% of participants were freshman, 25% sophomores, 17%, juniors, 5% seniors, and fewer than 1% had been enrolled for more than five years. The college years of late adolescence may be one of the most important times to study cyberbullying due to its frequency of occurrence; virtually all college students have used the internet (Harris Interactive, 2001, as in Finn, 2004) and 88% of traditional college-aged individuals (18-29-year-olds) use social media (Smith & Anderson, 2018). Four forms (overt, relational, forwarding of over and relational) of cyberbullying were measured on a 1-5 scale from Never to Always. Seven items, on a scale from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree were used to measure participants’ moral disengagement from cyberbullying. Three subscales (comparative validation from peers, voicing opinions, and evaluative thinking) from the assessment of Cognitive Autonomy and Self-Evaluation (CASE, Beckert, 2006) were included in this study. Participants responded on a scale from 1 = Always to 5 = Never how much each statement applied to them (all items were reverse-coded).
Cyberbullying moral disengagement positively, significantly predicted of all four forms of cyberbullying. Comparative validation was negatively associated with forwarding relational cyberbullying. Evaluative thinking was positively related to direct and forwarding relational cyberbullying.
This study replicated the association between cyberbullying moral disengagement and cyberbullying while building upon this research by showing that moral disengagement and other social-cognitive factors also predict forwarding cyberbullying media. We suspect that college students may perceive forwarding relational cyberbullying to be unacceptable behavior, which is why those who care about their peers’ validation do not engage in this behavior. Further, those who are socially skilled may be more inclined to perpetrate relational aggression toward others; relational aggression is associated with social intelligence (Kaukiainen et al., 1999). This is, to our knowledge, the first study to assess forwarding behavior, which assists aggressors as they harm others through cybervictimization, among college students. The results showed that some of the same social cognitive mechanisms that predicted engaging in cyberbullying as a perpetrator were also related to forwarding cyberbullying. Efforts to curb cyberbullying should include recognition of the harms of creating harmful digital content, but also engaging in cyberbullying as a harmful bystander by sharing cyberbullying content with others.

Authors

• Diana Meter, Utah State University
  Presenting Author

• Troy Beckert, Utah State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ross Budziszewski, Utah State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Abigail Phillips, Utah State University
  Non-Presenting Author