The role of emotion regulation and empathy in students displaying cyberbullying

Abstract

Anxiety, anger, sadness, and other negative emotions are the harmful effect of bullying, especially in today's digital era. Many cases of bullying happen through social media, often associated with cyberbullying. Therefore, cyberbullying is increasingly common and requires control as early as possible. This study aims to identify the role of students’ emotion regulation and empathy in cyberbullying behavior. The participants are 64 university students who tend to commit cyberbullying, chosen with the cluster random sampling technique. Three measurement tools, cyberbullying scale, emotion regulation scale, and empathy scale, were used in this study. Data were then analyzed with multiple linear regression analysis. Our finding reveals that emotion regulation significantly predicts cyberbullying, but empathy is not predicting cyberbullying. Emotion regulation allows students to keep their composure, control their words and action according to prevailing customs and norms and avoid showing aggression to people. Emotion regulation can help students to break the chain of cyberbullying.

Konstruksi Program Bimbingan Pribadi-Sosial Dalam Meningkatkan Empati Siswa

“…Persoalan bullying merupakan masalah paling berbahaya yang disebabkan oleh rendahnya empati (Dara et al, 2019;Lika, 2019;Yuliana & Muslikah, 2021) . Di era digital ini siswa marak juga melakukan cyberbulllying (Apsari & Siswati, 2020;Gunawan, 2021;Khairunnisa & Alfaruqy, 2022;Mujidin et al, 2023) yang menjadikan empati sangatlah dibutuhkan oleh siswa sebagai warganet (Susanto & Budimansyah, 2022).…”

A comparative analysis of adolescents' emotions and emotion regulation strategies when witnessing different cyberbullying scenarios

“…Researchers have identified predictors and perpetuating factors of cyberbullying, including age, sex, internet addiction, impulsivity, lack of empathy, and deficits in emotional regulation [ [8] , [9] , [10] , [11] , [12] , [13] , [14] ]. Understanding these factors is crucial for effective intervention [ 15 ].…”

“…Gross [ 54 ] defined emotion regulation as the use of conscious or unconscious strategies which are used to increase, maintain, or decrease the various components of emotional response (i.e., behavior, cognitions and physiological responses). As mentioned above, emotion regulation is an important predictor of psychological adjustment and social competence in adolescents [ 12 , 21 , 55 ] and according to the literature [ [21] , [56] , [57] ], one of the causes of cyberbullying is the difficulty revealed by aggressors in regulating their emotions adaptively. In fact, the higher the emotional regulation, the lower the prevalence of cyberbullying.…”

“…In fact, the higher the emotional regulation, the lower the prevalence of cyberbullying. On the contrary, the lower the emotional regulation, the higher the cyberbullying prevalence [ 12 , 58 ]. Specifically, individuals who can regulate their emotions seem to reveal a greater capacity to control impulsive behavior, obtain more emotional support and establish better interpersonal relationships [ 59 ].…”