I Do It Because I Feel that…Moral Disengagement and Emotions in Cyberbullying and Cybervictimisation

Abstract

Few studies have jointly explored the role of factors such as the use of social media, the personality characteristics of young people, the use of thinking mechanisms aimed at moral disengagement, and the emotions experienced in relation to cyberbullying and cybervictimisation behaviour. The analysis presented here, carried out through a questionnaire distributed online and filled in by 655 Italian high school students, allowed to highlight the relationships between these variables. In particular, it emerged that the phenomena of cyberbullying and cybervictimisation are related to the time spent online and to the mechanisms of moral disengagement, which in turn are related to the personality trait of agreeableness. Emotions experienced are most clearly positive in cases of cyberbullying and negative for the victims. This correspondence, however, is reversed in bullies who resort more to thoughts aimed at moral disengagement and feel more negative emotions. The same reversal seems to occur in the victims who, in correspondence with an increased use of the mechanisms of moral disengagement, report to feel more positive emotions.