Understanding the Relationship Between Proactive and Reactive Aggression, and Cyberbullying Across United States and Singapore Adolescent Samples

Abstract

This study examined cyberbullying among adolescents across United States and Singapore samples. Specifically, the purpose of the investigation was to study the differential associations between proactive and reactive aggression, and cyberbullying across two cultures. A total of 425 adolescents from the United States (M age = 13 years) and a total of 332 adolescents from Singapore (M age = 14.2 years) participated in the study. Results of the moderator analyses suggested that nationality was not a moderator of the relationship between proactive aggression and cyberbullying, and between reactive aggression and cyberbullying. As expected, findings showed proactive aggression to be positively associated with cyberbullying, after controlling for reactive aggression, across both samples. Likewise, as hypothesized, reactive aggression and cyberbullying was not found to be significant after controlling for proactive aggression across both samples. Implications of these findings were discussed: (a) Proactive aggression is a possible risk factor for both bullying and cyberbullying; (b) proactive and reactive aggression could be argued to be distinct as they have different correlates-only proactive aggression contributed to cyberbullying after controlling for reactive aggression; (c) this research extends previous work and contributes toward cross-cultural work using similar and comparable measures across different samples; and (d) prevention and intervention programs targeted at proactive aggressive adolescents could adopt a two-pronged approach by changing mind sets, and by understanding and adopting a set of rules for Internet etiquette.

Bullying in South-East Asian Countries: A review

“…In addition the studies by Ang and Goh (2010); , Ang et al (2011Ang et al ( , 2013; Pozzoli et al (2012); Lwin et al (2012) make distinctive contributions to the international literature in their testing of individual and peer factors predicting involvement in bullying and cyberbullying.…”

“…A series of studies by Ang and Goh (2010), Ang et al ( , 2011Ang et al ( , 2013, Lwin et al (2012) and Pozzoli et al (2012), published in international journals, are directed not so much toward prevalence and nature of bullying, but to testing out various models which might predict the relationship between individual psychological characteristics, and roles in bullying or as a bystander. worked with pupils from one elementary and one middle school.…”

Factores de riesgo en el ciberacoso: revisión sistemática a partir del modelo del triple riesgo delictivo (TRD)

“…Otro de los análisis más actuales, sobre sendas muestras de 425 estudiantes estadounidenses y 332 jóvenes chinos, pone de manifiesto la mayor incidencia de las conductas proactivas, es decir, relacionadas con la instrumentalidad de los comportamientos de ciberacoso (Ang et al, 2013).…”

“…El resultado es que no se encuentran diferencias entre ambas sociedades, aunque en Estados Unidos se documentan más casos de ciberacoso que en Japón. De igual forma, referido a estos aspectos culturales, Ang et al (2013) no encuentran diferencias en sendas muestras de Estados Unidos y China.…”

Victims of cyberbullying in the Region of Murcia: a growing reality

“…Accordingly, there are studies where the authors refer to the need to bear repetition in mind as a key factor as with -traditional-bullying (Ang, Huan, & Florell, 2014;Müller, Pfetsch, & Ittel, 2014;Wachs, 2012;West, 2015), while other authors believe that with ICT it is impossible to know how often a video or web page, is viewed, copied and passed on to the others, so a victim can be humiliated time and again through a single act (Beckman, Hagquist, & Hellström, 2013;Frisén, Berne, & Lunde, 2014;Kowalski & Limber, 2013;Slonje, Smith, & Frisén, 2013). If you add to this the fact that a new questionnaire is often created for each study, and that the psychometric properties thereof vary (Berne et al, 2013), it is easily understood how many variations exist.…”