Teasing and Internet Harassment among Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Envy and the Moderating Role of the Zhong-Yong Thinking Style

Abstract

Extant research studies have documented that teen victims of traditional bullying are more likely to be perpetrators of Internet harassment. Teasing is a typical form of verbal bullying, but, unfortunately, its link with Internet harassment perpetration has rarely been investigated to date. Therefore, this study constructed two moderated mediation models to explore the relation between weight-related/competency-related teasing (the two main types of teasing) and Internet harassment, and whether these associations are mediated by envy and moderated by the Zhong-Yong thinking style. A total of 1811 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 13.22 years, SD = 0.97) were investigated to examine the two models. The results clarified that: (1) weight-related/competency-related teasing was positively predictive of adolescent Internet harassment; (2) envy acted a partially mediating role in the associations between weight-related/competency-related teasing and Internet harassment; (3) the Zhong-Yong thinking style not only moderated the link between weight-related/competency-related teasing and envy, with the effect being more profound for a high-level Zhong-Yong thinking style possessed by adolescents, but also moderated the direct link between competency-related teasing and Internet harassment, with the relation being more potent when the level of Zhong-Yong thinking style was low. Nevertheless, the direct link between weight-related teasing and Internet harassment was not moderated by the Zhong-Yong thinking style. These findings are important to comprehend the psychological mechanisms linking weight-related/competency-related teasing to Internet harassment, and provide some enlightenment for preventing and intervening in adolescent Internet harassment perpetration.

Social Undermining and Interpersonal Rumination among Employees: The Mediating Role of Being the Subject of Envy and the Moderating Role of Social Support

“…Prior research on envy has mostly focused on the influence of envy on the emotional reactions and behavioral choices of people who are envious of others, but little attention has been paid to the emotional reactions and behavioral choices of those who are the subject of such envy [ 58 ]. Of the few research studies that examined this perspective, some have highlighted the pain and negative social experiences of those subjected to others’ envy, highlighting how such comparisons affect employees’ emotional responses, behavioral choices, and work performance.…”