Abstract
In a cross-sectional questionnaire study with N = 1045 German students between 13 and 18 years old (M = 14.1, SD = 0.6), we investigated the relation between students’ cyber-bullying perpetration and victimization and their personal belief in a just world (BJW). We considered students’ individual experience of teacher and classmate justice as possible mediators of these relations, and statistically controlled for student sex, internet use, empathy, and social desirability. Bootstrap mediation analyses showed that the more students endorsed personal BJW, the more they evaluated their teachers’ and classmates’ behavior toward them personally as just, and the less likely they were to report that they cyber-bullied others or were victims of cyber-bullying. The students’ individual experiences of teacher justice mediated the association between personal BJW and cyber-bullying perpetration, whereas their experience of classmate justice mediated the relation between personal BJW and cyber-bullying victimization. The pattern of results persisted when we controlled for student sex, average internet use per day, empathy, and social desirability. We discuss the adaptive functions of BJW and implications for future school research and practice.
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