The influence of participant role, gender, and age in elementary and high-school children's moral justifications of cyberbullying behaviors

Abstract

The current study examined elementary and high school students' moral justifications of on-line aggression from the perspective of perpetrators and bystanders. Gender differences were also examined. Participants (N = 100, 8–16 years old) read a series of stories depicting cyber-aggression. Participants were asked to justify either a perpetrator's or a bystander's behavior on-line. Based on Perren, Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, Malti, & Hymel's model (2012), participants' justifications were coded according to 7 categories (i.e., reciprocity, moral rules, empathy, egocentric reasoning, deviant rules, lack of empathy and no moral stance) that were divided into 3 types of justifications (i.e., morally responsible, morally disengaged, and morally indifferent). Participants also completed a self-report measure on the frequency of their own experiences with cyber-aggression. Findings show that youth tend to use more morally responsible justifications when evaluating a perpetrator's behavior and morally disengaged justifications when judging a bystander's behavior.