Students’ judgments on different cyberbullying incidents: the relationship between moral philosophy and intention to engage

Abstract

This article draws on moral theory to explore how 415 adolescents made decisions when confronted with cyberbullying events and further examines whether adolescents with different individual factors (i.e., gender and educational level) have differences in moral philosophy and cyberbullying intention. A scenario-type questionnaire including three cyberbullying events (harassment, denigration and exclusion) was employed to investigate how students apply five moral philosophies in different cyberbullying cases and their engagement intentions in these activities. The results indicated that adolescents adopted a mixed moral philosophy to evaluate cyberbullying events. Females were more inclined to adopt stricter moral equity and relativism to evaluate cyberbullying incidents, while males possessed stronger cyberbullying intention in all scenarios. Junior high school participants tended to believe that all types of cyberbullying are less beneficial to them than university participants. In addition, five moral philosophies can conjointly forecast intentions in three scenarios, accounting for 42 to 57% of the variance. Among them, moral equity is a common predictor. Based on the results, recommendations are provided to reduce the possibility of cyberbullying occurrence by strengthening the content of moral education.