Understanding the role of social factors in cyberbullying at work

Abstract

This study examines how two social factors (perceived social injustice and social dominance orientation) relate to the likelihood of cyberbullying. Online experiments involving 12 hypothesized social injustice scenarios in the work place tested the impact of these two social factors on the likelihood of cyberbullying across adult samples drawn from two countries (USA and China). Results revealed that (a) perceived distributive injustice positively predicts the likelihood of cyberbullying; (b) social dominance orientation negatively predicts three types of perceived social injustice; (c) and social dominance orientation positively predicts the likelihood of cyberbullying. The analyses revealed only one significant difference between results from the USA versus Chinese samples. These findings indicate that social factors (social injustice and social dominance orientation) can influence cyberbullying dynamics across multiple nationalities.