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

Abstract

There is a growing interest in preventing cyberbullying in youth. However, multiple questions remain as to the relationship between cyberbullying and psychosocial variables. This study examines the relationship between personality traits, aggression and cyberbullying (victims, bullies, victimized bullies and not involved) in 548 Spanish students aged 10 to 13 (50.2% boys). To do so, the Screening of Peer Harassment, the Big Five Questionnaire for Children and the Aggression Questionnaire were used. Logistic regression analyses indicated that the extraversion trait is an explanatory factor for being a victim and openness is a protective factor against being a cyberbully. Agreeableness was found to be a positive predictor of being a cyberbullying victim. Only verbal aggression and anger were included as explanatory factors of being a victim and a victimized bully, respectively. The results are discussed, suggesting their potential implications in the development of preventive programs.

Personality types and socio-demographic determinants of girls aggressive behaviors in rehabilitation programs in Kenya

“…Cavalcanti and Pimentel (2016) further found direct effects of neuroticism extraversion and Agreeableness in physical aggression, which was not found in this study. Further, Escortel et al (2020) indicated that the extraversion trait had been an explanatory factor in cyber bullying victims.…”

Cyberbullying in elementary and middle school students: A systematic review

“…Second, several studies explored how students were immersed in different CB situations from different roles (Schultze-Krumbholz, Hess, Pfetsch, & Scheithauer, 2018). Most of them evaluated the bully, victim and witness roles (5 articles), but others only investigated victims (4 articles), witness (3 articles) or bully and victims (Chu, Fan, Liu, & Zhou, 2018b;Escortell, Aparisi, Martínez-Monteagudo, & Delgado, 2020).…”

Relationship between Socio-Emotional Competencies and the Overlap of Bullying and Cyberbullying Behaviors in Primary School Students

“…Among the recent studies examining cyberbullying prevalence among primary school students, Aizenkot [ 28 ] reported that 7.8% of the Israeli participants were cyber-victimized in their Whatsapp group chat. Escortell et al [ 29 ], assessing 15 electronic harassment behaviours in a sample of 548 Spanish students aged 10 to 13 from Alicante, found that 18% of the participants reported suffering cybervictimization. In a series of studies with students in years 3 to 6 of primary school in Catalonia (Spain), Sidera et al found that 14.4% of the participants have suffered at least one online aggression in the last month [ 30 ] and 4.4% were cyber victims with a minimum frequency of once or twice a month [ 31 ].…”