Citation

Ciucci E, Baroncelli A. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 2014; 17(9): 584-590.

Affiliation

Department of Education and Psychology, University of Florence , Florence, Italy .

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/cyber.2014.0020

PMID

25055248

Abstract

This study investigated the unique and interactive effects of emotion-related personality traits (i.e., callousness and uncaring traits) and peer social standing (i.e., social preference and perceived popularity) on cyberbullying behaviors in preadolescents. A total of 529 preadolescents (247 boys, 46.69%) were recruited from an Italian middle school (Mage=12 years and 7 months; SD=1 year and 2 months). The participants primarily consisted of Italian children (91.12%). A series of binary logistic regression analyses parted by gender were conducted to examine the main and interactive effects of self-reported emotion-related variables and peer-reported social standing in the prediction of self-reported cyberbullying behaviors, while controlling for cyber victimization and grade effects. In girls, an uncaring disposition was directly associated with cyberbullying behaviors, whereas in boys this association only emerged for those with low perceived popularity. Our results indicated that, in developing anti(cyber)bullying programs, school researchers and practitioners should jointly consider individual and contextual factors.

Language: en