Cyberbullying, Aggressiveness, and Emotional Intelligence in Adolescence

Abstract

The devastating consequences of cyberbullying during adolescence justify the relevance of obtaining empirical evidence on the factors that may cause participation in its distinct roles. The goal of this study was to analyze the predictive capacity of aggressiveness (physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility) and emotional intelligence (attention, understanding, and emotional regulation) with respect to being a victim, aggressor or victim-aggressor of cyberbullying during adolescence. The Screening for Peer Bullying, the Aggressiveness Questionnaire and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24 were administered to a sample of 1102 Spanish secondary education students, aged 12 to 18. In general, results revealed a higher probability of being a victim, aggressor or victim-aggressor as physical aggressiveness and anger increased. On the other hand, results revealed a low probability of being a victim, aggressor or victim-aggressor as emotional understanding and emotional regulation increased. These findings highlight the importance of considering said variables when creating prevention programs to stop or reduce the social and educational issue of cyberbullying during adolescence.

Cyberbullying in the University Setting. Relationship With Emotional Problems and Adaptation to the University

“…(Schenk and Fremouw, 2012;Faucher et al, 2014;Giménez et al, 2015;Na et al, 2015;Aricak and Ozbay, 2016). It also supports studies that have suggested that these personal and emotional problems may lead to an increased risk of victimization (Garaigordobil and Oñederra, 2010;Reijntjes et al, 2010;Martínez-Monteagudo et al, 2019a), as well as the results of the first part of this study. As for social adjustment, many studies have suggested that victims display poor social adjustment (difficulties making friends, poor peer relationships, lack of social skills) as compared to non-victims (Kowalski et al, 2012).…”

“…Although the lack of similar studies hinders a comparison of these results, the data agrees with that from prior studies that confirm the poor personalemotional, academic and institutional adjustment of cyberbullies (Friedlander et al, 2007;Credé and Niehorster, 2012). So, with respect to personal-emotional adjustment, distinct studies have shown that having suitable personal and emotional skills is generally considered to be a protective factor from the appearance of problematic behaviors such as school bullying or cyberbullying (Garaigordobil and Oñederra, 2010;Elipe et al, 2015;Martínez-Monteagudo et al, 2019a). Emotional skills help students to feel a greater level of empathy toward their classmates, which may significantly reduce their involvement in intimidating behavior; however, one of the characteristics that is typically mentioned by cyberbullies is a low level of empathy with victims, since they do not appear to demonstrate unrest or guilt as a result of their aggressions, being unable to empathize with the victim's emotions or feelings (Hinduja and Patchin, 2007;Aricak, 2009).…”

“…Likewise, we believe that future studies should attempt to determine which factors could help to better understand cyberbullying. Thus, for example, the analysis of other variables, such as social support (Worsley et al, 2019), the impulsivity or other features of self-regulation (Kokkinos et al, 2014), aggressiveness (Martínez-Monteagudo et al, 2019a), sexual orientation (Wensley and Campbell, 2012), coping styles (Hu et al, 2018), emotional intelligence or family environment (Martínez-Monteagudo et al, 2019b) can help to better understand this problem. Therefore, intervention strategies should also attempt to increase the levels of these protective factors in order to decrease the levels of risk factors associated with cyberbullying.…”

Personality Traits and Aggression as Explanatory Variables of Cyberbullying in Spanish Preadolescents

“…So, despite the fact that past studies have suggested that adolescent victimized bullies have the lowest levels of social skills [ 47 ], our results suggest that during preadolescence, when cyberbullying has yet to become chronic, minors with adjusted personality characteristics, such as sensitivity towards others and lower anger levels, have a greater risk of developing a victimized bully profile. This contradicts studies carried out on the adolescent population which concluded that victimization may affect student’s empathy levels and participation in equally aggressive behaviors [ 48 ], and victimized bullies have higher aggression levels [ 18 , 21 ].…”

Relationship between Emotional Intelligence, Cybervictimization, and Academic Performance in Secondary School Students

“…Socio-emotional skills are necessary among students, both inside and outside the classroom [32,33]. Multidimensional analyses of EI in cases of cybervictimization have discovered that cybervictims pay considerable attention to their own emotions (emotional attention) but have difficulties understanding and managing them [34][35][36].…”