How is Online Disinhibition Related to Adolescents’ Cyberbullying Perpetration? Empathy and Gender as Moderators

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship between online disinhibition and adolescents’ cyberbullying perpetration and investigated whether empathy and gender would moderate this relationship. A total of 2407 Chinese adolescents aged 11–16 years completed the questionnaires to measure their online disinhibition, empathy, and cyberbullying perpetration. Results indicated that high levels of online disinhibition were associated with high levels of cyberbullying perpetration, even after controlling for key covariates related to cyberbullying perpetration. Empathy significantly moderated the relationship between online disinhibition and cyberbullying perpetration. Specifically, this relationship was not significant at high levels of empathy. Moreover, the impact of empathy was moderated by gender. For male adolescents, online disinhibition was significantly associated with cyberbullying perpetration only when their empathy was low. For female adolescents, the relationship between online disinhibition and cyberbullying perpetration became nonsignificant, regardless of whether they had a low or high level of empathy.

How Is Virtuous Personality Trait Related to Online Deviant Behavior among Adolescent College Students in the Internet Environment? A Moderated Moderated-Mediation Analysis

“…Compared with those college students with low levels of perspective taking, a high perspective taking level helps the college students enhance the weakened effects of virtuous personality trait on their moral disengagement. As a type of empathy, perspective taking has been confirmed to be negatively related to moral disengagement significantly [ 25 , 33 ]. That is, perspective taking can act as a protective factor [ 56 ].…”

“…Accordingly, the virtuous personality trait of women has a significant negative predictive effect on moral disengagement at high and low levels of perspective taking. However, men do not have a strong desire to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships and are more prone to moral disengagement [ 33 , 40 , 44 ]. Hence, only when men have a high level of perspective taking and can sincerely empathize with others will their virtuous personality trait significantly negatively predict their moral disengagement.…”

“…Previous studies have suggested that perspective taking is the cognitive component of empathy or the ability of an individual to put himself in others’ shoes and infer others’ internal psychological activities [ 31 , 32 ]. Some studies have shown that perspective taking can make adolescents consider things from the perspective of others and show less moral disengagement in the Internet world [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. In addition, previous studies have also found that empathy contributes to moral judgments [ 36 ], which means that empathy can make individuals more likely to behave consistently with their moral standards, thus inhibiting moral disengagement.…”

“…Numerous studies have consistently found that women score higher than men on certain personality traits related to kindness (i.e., agreeableness) [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Miller’s relational theory has pointed out that women care more about interpersonal relationships [ 33 , 43 ]. Consequently, for women, they have a relatively higher level of virtuous personality trait and a lower level of moral disengagement, which means that women’s virtuous personality trait may have a stronger negative predictive effect on moral disengagement.…”

“…To be specific, compared with men, women have higher virtuous personality traits and perspective taking, and lower moral disengagement [ 40 , 41 , 44 ]. According to Miller’s relational theory, women have a stronger desire to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships than men [ 33 , 43 ]. Thus, adolescents’ gender may also moderate the moderating effect of perspective taking on the link between virtuous personality trait and moral disengagement.…”