Effects of Adolescents’ Gender, Moral Disengagement and Empathy on the Types of Bystanders in the Possible Occurrence of Cyberbullying

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of adolescents’ gender, moral disengagement and empathy on the types of bystanders in the possible occurrence of cyberbullying.Methods: Data were collected from 566 adolescents in the seventh grade attending six middle schools in South Korea via the online task of cyber scenario vignettes and online survey. Preliminary analyses as descriptive statistics, and gender differences of the types of adolescent bystanders were carried out using SPSS Statistics 22.0. In addition, research models were conducted by a three-step approach analysis using the Mplus 8.4 program to examine the effects of predictors on the types of adolescent bystanders.Results: This study derived the following findings. First, adolescent bystanders were classified into five types: limited bystanders, pro-bullies, outsiders, defenders, and inconsistent bystanders. The types of adolescent bystanders differed by gender, indicating higher percentages of females than males in inconsistent bystanders, defenders, and outsiders, whereas higher percentages of males than females in pro-bullies and inconsistent bystanders. Second, the probability of being classified into each type differed according to adolescents’ gender, moral disengagement, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy.Conclusion: These findings empirically confirmed individual differences in adolescent bystanders and may suggest the importance of adolescents’ moral engagement as a cognitive factor and cognitive and affective empathy as psychological factors to understand bystander types in the possible occurrence of cyberbullying. Implications for prevention strategies by different bystander types applying cognitive and affective empathy as protective factors and moral disengagement as a risk factor are discussed.