Abstract
AbstractThis short‐term longitudinal study examined whether individual moral disengagement and classroom collective moral disengagement were associated with offline and online bullying over the course of 1 year. Multilevel growth modeling with three levels was used to analyze data from a sample of 1048 Swedish students in 68 classrooms. The students completed a self‐report questionnaire at two time‐points separated by approximately 1 year. All students were in fifth grade (Mage = 11.5) at the first timepoint and in sixth grade (Mage = 12.6) at the second timepoint. Results showed that students reported more offline and online bullying if they had higher initial levels of individual moral disengagement and if they belonged to classrooms with higher initial levels of classroom collective moral disengagement. Also, a change in individual moral disengagement was positively associated with a change in bullying others offline and online.
Highlights
Bullying is commonly defined as a form of aggressive behavior, characterized by repetition and an intent to harm or cause distress to a less powerful victim (Gladden et al, 2014; Olweus, 2013)
This study has examined the influence of individual moral disengagement and classroom collective moral disengagement on self‐reported offline and online bullying over the course of 1 year
Students in classrooms with higher classroom collective moral disengagement bullied more online and offline—over and above their individual tendency to morally disengage in the fifth grade
Summary
Bullying is commonly defined as a form of aggressive behavior, characterized by repetition and an intent to harm or cause distress to a less powerful victim (Gladden et al, 2014; Olweus, 2013). Other findings imply that the two forms both have unique relations with different covariates (e.g., personality traits: Antoniadou et al, 2016; van Geel et al, 2017) and to be mainly perpetrated by different groups of students (Kubiszewski et al, 2015; Resett & Gámez‐Guadix, 2017). Taken together, this suggests that online bullying is a related and yet unique phenomenon relative to offline bullying (e.g., Ansary, 2020; Giumetti & Kowalski, 2016). It is reasonable to continue to examine the role of gender in offline and online bullying
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