Relationship Between Personalities, Social Supports And Cyberbullying Bystanders’ Behaviors

Cyberbullying refers to aggressive behaviors in which a person or group hurts or threatens others intentionally through information and communication technologies. The groups involved in cyberbullying on social network sites include not only direct cyberbullies and cybervictims, but also a lot of bystanders. Bystanders in cyberbullying refer to people who are not the original bullies and victims, they are insiders, witnesses and interveners of the incident. Bystanders respond to cyberbullying in roughly three different ways:remaining an outsider, assisting or reinforcing the bully and supporting or defending the victim. College students as the main part of netizens, inevitably become cyberbullying bystanders, and their different behaviors can affect the evolution of cyberbullying. In this study, we examined the relationship between gender, grade, experience of being cyberbully/cybervictim, personality, real social support as well as internet social support and different bystanders’behavioral intentions in 1293 college students with questionnaires. The results are as follows:1. Boys scored significantly higher than girls in the promoting bullying behaviors and defending victim’s behaviors; no significant gender differences were found in outside behaviors. The first year students scored lower than the second and third year students in promoting bullying behaviors, while higher in defending behaviors; no significant grade differences were found in outside behaviors.2. Bystanders’experience of being cyberbullies had positive effects on promoting bully behaviors and outside behaviors while negative effects on defending behaviors; bystanders’experience of being cybervictims had positive effects on defending behaviors and negative effects on outside behaviors, but no significant effects on promoting bully behaviors.After statistically controlled the influences of gender, grade and experience of being cyberbullies and cybervictims, the results showed following:3. Agreeableness and extraversion had significant negative effects on bystanders’ promoting bully behaviors, neuroticism and openness had significant positive effects on promoting bully behaviors; agreeableness and conscientiousness had significant positive effects on defending behaviors; conscientiousness and extraversion had significant negative effects on outside behaviors.4. Bystanders’ real social support had negative influence on promoting bully behaviors, while internet social support had positive influence on promoting bully behaviors; real social support and internet social support both had positive influences on defending behaviors; internet social support had negative influence on outside behaviors, while real social support had no significant direct influence on outside behaviors.5. Real social support played a partial mediation effect on agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness and promoting bully behaviors, the maximum effect size emerged in the relationship between agreeableness and promoting bully behaviors; internet social support played a partial mediation effect on neuroticism. openness and promoting bully behaviors, and the effect size was higher in the relationship between neuroticism and promoting bully behaviors; real social support and internet social support played sequential mediating roles among agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness and promoting bully behaviors, the maximum effect size emerged in the relationship between agreeableness and promoting bully behaviors.6. Agreeableness and conscientiousness affected defending behaviors through the sequential mediating roles of real social support and internet social support, and the two ways’effect sizes were equal.7. Real social support and internet social support played sequential mediating roles between conscientiousness and outside behaviors, as well as extraversion and outside behaviors, and the two sequential mediating ways’effect sizes were equal.