The introduction of new technologies created avenues for new forms of bullying. Despite an impressive body of research on cyberbullying amongst youngsters, studies in the work context have largely neglected its electronic counterpart. In this study, we define workplace cyberbullying and propose an Emotion Reaction Model of its occurrence. Our model aligns with the main proposition of the Affective Events Theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), that emotions evoked by certain work events may fuel emotion driven behaviors. However, in our model these relationships are further specified combining different literature traditions.Making inferences from the workplace bullying literature, we suggest work stressors to be the work events leading to cyberbullying. Furthermore, building on the literature on cyberbullying amongst youngsters, computer-mediated communication and emotions, we propose discrete emotions of anger, sadness and fear to play a significant role in explaining this stressor-cyberbullying relation. In addition, different moderators (i.e., control appraisal and emotion regulation) of this relationship are suggested and implications of the model are discussed.
The goal of the present study was to investigate how negative peer interactions offline and online are associated with each other and with other daily interactions amongst early adolescents. To this aim, photo-elicitation interviewing was used to gather data amongst a sample of 34 early adolescents (13-14 years). A thematic analysis revealed that adolescents experience a wide range of different types of negative peer interactions offline and online. Most of the negative interactions recalled by the participants took place exclusively offline or online, and only a few were continued and/or managed in another environment. When participants were involved in online negative interactions they often acted as if nothing happened afterwards in the offline environment. On the other hand, offline negative interactions were often not continued online because the persons involved did not interact online. Further implications of the results for prevention and intervention, and for future research are discussed.
Although the majority of research on adolescents' online behavior has focused on antisocial behavior such as cyberbullying, adolescents more often behave prosocially than antisocially online. Research on offline prosocial behavior has shown that happiness and prosocial behavior are related. Furthermore, spillover-crossover research suggests that emotional states originating in one context can spill over to another context (Bakker, Westman, & van Emmerik, 2009) and can even cross over from one person to another. Therefore, this study examined whether happiness is also related to adolescents' online prosocial behavior and whether others' (in this case, parents') happiness also indirectly, via transmission to adolescents' own happiness, predicts adolescents' online prosocial behavior. Via a daily diary method, the associations of adolescents' own happiness and their parents' happiness with adolescents' online prosocial behavior were tested on a daily level. The findings suggest that, on a daily level, happiness creates a ripple effect whereby adolescents and parents take their positive emotional states from school and work home, and adolescents act on their happiness by behaving more prosocially online. The strongest spillover and crossover effects were found for girls and their mothers, evoking questions for future research to understand these gender differences.
Impulsivity has a significant impact on behavior during adolescence. Moreover, previous research has shown associations between impulsivity (or low self-control) and perpetration and victimization of cyberbullying. However, the influence of impulsivity on bystander behavior has not been investigated yet, although bystanders play an important role in bullying situations. The present study examined the relationship between impulsivity and helping behavior in bystanders of cyberbullying. To predict the likelihood of helping a victim when witnessing cyberbullying, we collected self-reported data from a representative sample of 2309 pupils, aged 9 to 17. The results suggested that more impulsive adolescents were less likely to help the cybervictim. An explanation for the findings may be that helping behavior in a cyberbullying context requires inhibitory abilities which are deficit in impulsive adolescents. These findings could be used to inform intervention strategies about which factors are associated with bystander behavior in cyberbullying and how to target these.
There has been an increase in the use of Information Communication Technologies in the workplace. This change extends the scope of bullying behaviours at work to the online context. However, a generally accepted measure of workplace cyberbullying is still lacking. The purpose of the present paper is to construct and validate the Inventory of Cyberbullying Acts at Work, in order to contribute to this emerging field. Building on existing knowledge, we expected three types of cyberbullying behaviours to emerge in the work context: person related, work related and intrusive. First, the items of the scale were constructed and the three-dimensional structure of the scale was tested in two different samples. Then, the reliability and the convergent validity of the scale were assessed. Finally, we tested the predictive validity of the scale by assessing the impact of exposure to cyberbullying acts at work to individuals' mental well-being six months later. Our analyses confirmed the three dimensional structure of the scale. In addition, the scale was found reliable and valid. The construction of this scale offers an avenue for further research on cyberbullying in the work context.
The opportunities and mostly the risks of digital communication technologies for adolescents have been documented extensively in the last two decades, but less is known about how adolescents interact with each other online, especially regarding positive interactions.Moreover, since online prosocial and antisocial behavior have rarely been assessed simultaneously, it is hard to obtain a balanced view of adolescents' online behavior.Therefore, in this study, we examined both dimensions of online social behavior and how these are related to adolescents' experienced emotions and their uses of digital media.Findings indicated that participants performed and received more prosocial than antisocial behavior online. Experiencing negative as well as positive emotions was related to online social behavior, and these associations were mediated by adolescents' use of social and audiovisual media, but not by gaming or functional internet use. The social sharing of emotions and mood management theory are used to discuss the results.
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