Abstract
There have been various studies establishing a relationship between moral reasoning and the perpetration of cyberbullying, but very few analyzing either the moderating role played by moral disengagement in how both aggressor and victim perceive cyberbullying, or the repercussions of this moderation for the determination of the prevalence of the problem and for the design of prevention programs. The present study examines the relationship between moral disengagement, moral identity, and how victims of this type of abuse perceive cyberbullying. The participants were 1912 adolescents (51% women) from Extremadura (Spain) of ages from 14 to 18 years. They completed three questionnaires addressing perception of cyberbullying, moral disengagement, and moral identity. Factorial, structural, correlation, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to construct their perceptual structure of cyberbullying. These analyses showed the influence of their different levels of moral disengagement on those perceptions, and the moderating role that moral identity plays in the direct and indirect relationships between moral disengagement and the perception of cyberbullying. They revealed, on the one hand, the key and the subsidiary criteria victims use to classify some given cybernetic behavior as a case of cyberbullying, and, on the other, that the victims’ levels of moral disengagement explain both the justifications they resort to in order to interpret occurrences of cyberbullying and their shifting or spreading of responsibility onto others. Finally, the results can be a key element in the design of effective psychological interventions aimed at improving adolescents’ moral identity in situations of cybernetic victimization.
Highlights
In the last two decades, there has been an exponential growth in studies addressing the cyberbullying phenomenon, and an ever-greater diversity of variables introduced for analysis
The objectives of the present work were the following: (i) to identify the perceptive structure that cyberbullying victims have of this phenomenon, and that differentiates it from other forms of cyber aggression; (ii) to analyze the mediating effect of moral disengagement on the relationship between the perception of cyberbullying and victimization; and (iii) to explore the moderating role of moral identity in the relationship between the perception of cyberbullying and cybervictimization via moral disengagement
The confirmatory factorial analysis of the dimensions that form the perceptive structure of the victims on cyberbullying (χ2/df = 1.654, p < 0.01, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.039, root mean square residual (RMR) = 0.027, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.952, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.948, goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = 0.946) together with the correlation analysis of the variables constituting those dimensions (Table 1) allowed a structural model to be constructed which comprised seven standardized observable variables and one latent variable, cyberbullying (Figure 1)
Summary
In the last two decades, there has been an exponential growth in studies addressing the cyberbullying phenomenon, and an ever-greater diversity of variables introduced for analysis. Once past the simple causal explanations, one has to opt for an interrelation of factors or components that offers a more holistic understanding, and allows better adjustment of cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs. The consideration of such variables as morality, prevalence, and perceptions about. There has been a proliferation of works addressing how adolescents perceive cyberbullying (Menesini et al, 2012; Dredge et al, 2014; Correa and López, 2018; Midamba and Moreno, 2019) Their results differ significantly due to the variety of instruments used, the samples selected, and the types of analysis applied. They all coincide in pointing to knowledge of how young people define and identify the cyberbullying phenomenon and the different forms in which it manifests itself as constituting a powerful tool with which to adjust calculations of its prevalence, and to design specific measures of prevention and intervention in this type of abusive situation
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