Research On The Relationship Between Empathy, Moral Disengagement And Cyberbullying

As the development of Internet communication technology and frequent use of social network, cyberbullying appears as a new form of bullying. Cyberbullying is defined as the aggressive behaviors perpetrated via electronic communication technologies, individuals intentionally and repeatedly harm others who can’t easily defend himself or herself. Over the past years, researchers from many countries had paid attention to the filed of cyberbullying and had some researches about the characteristics and effects of cyberbullying. The study of cyberbullying by Chinese scholars was still in its fancy due to late popularization of network. With the adolescent user increase and deeply dependent on Internet,it’s essential to study cyberbullying behavior of national middle school students.Cyberbullying scale(2013) revised by Zhou, moral disengagement scale(2010) by Wang Xingchao and Yang Jiping, BES(2011) by Xia Dan, 619 adolescents from one middle and one high school in Baoding participated in this study which investigate the feature of cyberbullying and further explore correlation among adolescent empathy, moral disengagement and cyberbullying behavior.Through the descriptive analysis of data, difference analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis, the results are as follows:(1)Both middle school students’ cyberbullying and cyberbullied behaviors showed significant difference between gender. boys would be more likely than girls to experience cyberbullying as both victims and perpetrators.(2)Middle school students’ empathy showed significant difference between gender. girls had higher mean scores on affective empathy compared to boys.(3)Middle school students’ moral disengagement showed significant difference between gender. Boys had higher mean scores than girls.(4)Middle school students’ empathy has negative prediction to cyberbullying. Cognitive empathy has stronger influence than affective empathy.(5)Middle school students’ moral disengagement has positive prediction to cyberbullying. moral justification and distortion of consequences has strongest prediction.(6)Middle school students’ empathy has negative prediction to moral disengagement.(7) Moral disengagement has a mediating effect between Middle school students’ empathy and cyberbullying. Specifically, moral disengagement play partial mediation effect between cognitive empathy and cyberbullying. Moral disengagement play full mediation effect between affective empathy and cyberbullying.