CURVES AND LINES IN STATISTICS – THE IMPLICATIONS OF CURVILINEAR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VARIABLES IN A RESEARCH ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON VICTIM EMPATHY IN CYBERBULLYING INCIDENTS

Abstract

In 2004, Suler referred to the online disinhibition effect, arguing that online environments unleash aspects of individual’s personality that normally would have been kept under guard, thus the online hate speech flourishes. Another recent finding gives arguments for the actual detached voyeurs’ generation, underlying that by observing on screen, terrible things happening to other people, we develop our own experience towards the victim, but at an emotional distance. The more we observe terrifying events happening to other people, the more they reinforce our sense of denial and detachment, thus resulting a lack of victim empathy. Our research team has developed the project Keeping youth safe from Cyberbullying, ID 2016-3-TR01- KA205-036619 aiming to deeper understand the dynamics of different cyberbullying aspects in online environments among youth, by creating an online questionnaire composed by single item research questions related to core concepts and perceptions about cyberbullying motives and effects. Our focus is in analyzing the effects of online freedom of speech agreement on victim empathy in cyberbullying incidents, seen as two core concepts in bystanders’ mindset, in 140 high school students. Results show that when modelling effects of online freedom of speech agreement on victim empathy, the curvilinear model (13%) is more consistent that the linear model (9%), even if both models show statistical significance. Psychological and methodological conclusions and implications are discussed.