Cyberbullying perpetration among undergraduates: evidence of the roles of chronotype and sleep quality

Abstract

Cyberbullying is one of the important negative issues among adolescents and youngsters. Victims of cyberbullying perpetration have been reported to suffer many psychological and emotional problems that can lead them as far to suicide. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the associations of cyberbullying perpetration with gender, personality traits, chronotype, and sleep quality. Three hundred and fifty-three freshman and sophomore university students from Turkey (45.9% (n = 162) female and 54.1% (n = 191) male) completed a questionnaire that included Cyberbullying Scale, Big-5 Inventory, Composite Scale of Morningness, and Sleep Quality Scale. The most conspicuous result of the study was that chronotype and sleep quality were significant predictors of cyberbullying perpetration. Evening-type students had significantly higher scores on cyberbullying scale than neither-type students and morning-type students, and also neither-type students had higher scores on cyberbullying scale than morning-type students. Further, poorer sleep quality, being male, higher extraversion, higher neuroticism, and lower conscientiousness were related to higher cyberbullying perpetration.