Psychological Correlates of Cyberbullying and Cyber-Victimization

Year 2017, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 7 - 21, 29.12.2017

Ezgi Ildırım , Can Çalıcı , Barışhan Erdoğan

https://doi.org/10.19148/ijhbs.365829

Cited By: 12

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.

Keywords

cybervictimization, impulsivity, empathy, cyberbullying, self-concept

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