Dark personality traits and anger in cyber aggression perpetration: Is moral disengagement to blame?

Abstract

A number of dark personality traits (e.g., psychopathy and sadism) have been shown to predict cyber aggression perpetration among emerging adults; however, trait anger and moral disengagement, both useful in understanding other forms of aggression, have not typically been included in these models. The present study tested a model in which dark personality traits and trait anger were expected to predict cyber aggression perpetration and moral disengagement was expected to partially mediate these relationships. Emerging adult volunteers (N = 404; 41% men, 59% women) between 18 and 29 (M = 25.16, SD = 2.76) recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk completed an online survey assessing the variables of interest. Structural equation modeling showed that sadism (β = 0.450, p < .001), psychopathy (β = 0.118, p = .035), and anger (β = 0.099, p = .007) predicted cyber aggression perpetration when taking respondent sex and college enrollment into account, indicating a small effect for anger and psychopathy and a medium effect for sadism. Moral disengagement partially mediated these relationships (24.11% for sadism, 37.23% for psychopathy, and 29.79% for anger). Both trait anger and moral disengagement may be useful in preventing cyber aggression and informing the development of clinical interventions for perpetrators (e.g., anger management, moral reasoning training, improving distress tolerance). This study adds to the literature on personality traits and cyber aggression among emerging adults.

Moral disengagement mechanisms predict cyber aggression among emerging adults

“…Potentially, the predictive value of advantageous comparison outweighed and subsequently reduced the effects of the other two mechanisms in the cognitive restructuring cluster. Third, while previous studies of moral disengagement and cyber aggression have typically viewed moral disengagement as a unitary construct (e.g., Nocera et al, 2020;Runions & Bak, 2015) or four clusters (Falla et al, 2020), our results suggest that it may be beneficial to examine the role of specific moral disengagement mechanisms too. While the moral disengagement mechanisms together predicted cyber aggression perpetration, only dehumanization, advantageous comparison, distortion of consequences, and displacement of responsibility were significant, unique predictors.…”

“…Bandura (2002) clustered these mechanisms into four central strategies: cognitive restructuring, minimizing one's agentive role, disregarding/distorting consequences, and blaming/dehumanizing. Although there is ample evidence that overall moral disengagement (i.e., a composite of the eight mechanisms), as well as the four strategy clusters, predict several morally transgressive behaviors, relatively little is known about whether specific mechanisms have distinct correlates (Falla et al, 2020;Marin-Lopez et al, 2020;Nocera et al, 2020;Runions & Bak, 2015). Researchers have highlighted differences between the moral disengagement mechanisms (Falla et al, 2020(Falla et al, , 2021Runions et al, 2019;Thornberg & Jungert, 2014), suggesting that evaluating them individually may provide a more accurate understanding of their role.…”

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that moral disengagement, assessed as a unitary construct, is both a direct predictor of cyber aggression perpetration and a partial mediator of the relationships of dark personality traits to cyber aggression perpetration (e.g., Nocera et al, 2020). Much of the cyber aggression literature has focused on adolescents, and there is limited evidence of how to appropriately assess the eight moral disengagement mechanisms among emerging adults (Detert et al, 2008).…”

“…Moral disengagement, a set of cognitive processes through which one avoids negative feelings associated with engaging in immoral behavior (Bandura, 1990), has been shown to predict cyber aggression perpetration when assessed as a composite score (Marin-Lopez et al, 2020;Nocera et al, 2020;Runions & Bak, 2015). In the present study, we sought to learn more about the role of moral disengagement in cyber aggression among emerging adults by examining the relationship of eight specific moral disengagement mechanisms to four different types of cyber aggression.…”

Morality Development and Its Influence on Emotion, Attitudes, and Decision Making

“…Other personality traits like anger and spitefulness, have been notated in current literature to be negatively associated with moral behavior. Nocera et al (2021) found a statistically significant relationship between online aggression and trait-anger, which was mediated by moral disengagement. A 2020 study suggests that spitefulness is not related to moral binding values (ingroup loyalty, purity, respect for authority, etc.)…”