The Effect Of Negative Events On Online Aggressive Behaviors: The Mediating Role Of Relative Deprivation And The Moderating Role Of Empathy

With the popularization of the Internet,online aggressive behaviors have become a new type of aggression.It is defined as the aggressive behavior of intentionally harming others or groups with network media,such as doxing,verbal insults,etc.The victims want to avoid encountering these aggressions.Negative life events are a kind of typical stressors.These events often trigger stress reactions,which require individual active or passive adaptation.As more and more people express their opinions and attitudes through the Internet,people who encounter negative life events may carry out online aggressive behaviors in order to regulate their emotions.According to the relative deprivation theory,when the individual is weak compared with the reference,she or he will experience the feeling of unfairness and get anger.Relative deprivation is the dissatisfaction experience gained by individuals when making social comparisons.It may play a partial mediating role between negative life events and online aggressive behaviors.General aggression theory holds that there is an interaction between environmental stimulus and personalities,which leads to aggression.Empathy,as a positive personality,can affect the level of relative deprivation and online aggressive behaviors caused by relative deprivation.In conclusion,this study attempts to explore the impact of negative life events on online aggressive behaviors,and establish a moderated mediation model with relative deprivation as the mediating variable and empathy as the moderating variable.This study took 365 college students as the research object,using“Adolent Self-Rating Life Events Check List”,“Relative Deprivation Scale”,“Positive And Negative Empathy Scale”and“Online Aggressive Behavior Scale”as the measurement tools.SPSS26.0 was used for descriptive statistical analysis,independent sample t test and correlation analysis to verify the demographic differences of variables and the relationship between variables.Process plug-in was used to analyze the mediating effect,moderating effect and moderated mediating effect of the model.The research results are as follows:(1)The independent samples T test showed that negative life events,relative deprivation,empathy and online aggressive behaviors had significant gender differences.The independent samples t test also showed significant professional differences in positive empathy.Besides that,it also showed that rural college students took more frequently online aggressive behaviors than urban college students.(2)There is a significant correlation between negative life events and online aggressive behaviors.Individuals with more negative life events took more online aggressive behaviors.(3)There is a significant correlation between negative life events and relative deprivation.Individuals with more negative life events had higher levels of relative deprivation.(4)Relative deprivation plays a partial mediating role between negative life events and online aggressive behaviors.(5)Negative empathy plays a moderating role in the relationship between negative life events and relative deprivation.The higher the negative empathy score,the less significant is the relationship between negative life events and relative deprivation.There is no significant effect in positive empathy.