Psychological Correlates of Cyberbullying and Cyber-Victimization

Abstract

Technology use is increasing rapidly in today's world. Technological advances created new medium for aggression. Cyber bullying is one type of these behaviors which is defined as bullying via electronic communication tools. Although bullying is not an old issue, cyber bullying is a new concept which has similarities and differences between bullying in real life. Researchers found that cyber bullying and victimization have psycho-social correlates. This research aims to investigate cyberbullying and victimization along with their relationship with anxiety, depression, hostility, negative self-concept, impulsivity, empathy and internet addiction. The sample consists of 198 university students between 18 and 25 years of age. 65% of participants are female and the other 35% are male. In this study, The Turkish version of Short Symptom Inventory is used to measure depression, anxiety, somatization, hostility and negative self-concept. The Barratt Impulsivity Scale is used to measure impulsiveness and Basic Empathy Scale is used to measure empathy. Both cyberbullying and cyber victimization positively correlate with anxiety, depression, somatization, hostility, impulsivity and internet addiction. On the contrary, cyber bullying negatively correlated with empathy. As a result, it was concluded that cyberbullying and cyber victimization go hand in hand. The results showed that both variables show similar correlations with same psychological aspects.