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I Do It Because I Feel that…Moral Disengagement and Emotions in Cyberbullying and Cybervictimisation

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Social Computing and Social Media. Design, Ethics, User Behavior, and Social Network Analysis (HCII 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12194))

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Abstract

Few studies have jointly explored the role of factors such as the use of social media, the personality characteristics of young people, the use of thinking mechanisms aimed at moral disengagement, and the emotions experienced in relation to cyberbullying and cybervictimisation behaviour. The analysis presented here, carried out through a questionnaire distributed online and filled in by 655 Italian high school students, allowed to highlight the relationships between these variables. In particular, it emerged that the phenomena of cyberbullying and cybervictimisation are related to the time spent online and to the mechanisms of moral disengagement, which in turn are related to the personality trait of agreeableness. Emotions experienced are most clearly positive in cases of cyberbullying and negative for the victims. This correspondence, however, is reversed in bullies who resort more to thoughts aimed at moral disengagement and feel more negative emotions. The same reversal seems to occur in the victims who, in correspondence with an increased use of the mechanisms of moral disengagement, report to feel more positive emotions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, Via Roma 56, Siena, Italy

    Oronzo Parlangeli, Enrica Marchigiani, Stefano Guidi & Margherita Bracci

  2. Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, Via Roma 56, Siena, Italy

    Alessandro Andreadis & Riccardo Zambon

Authors
  1. Oronzo Parlangeli
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  2. Enrica Marchigiani
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  3. Stefano Guidi
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  4. Margherita Bracci
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  5. Alessandro Andreadis
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  6. Riccardo Zambon
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Correspondence to Oronzo Parlangeli .

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  1. Towson University, Towson, MD, USA

    Gabriele Meiselwitz

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Parlangeli, O., Marchigiani, E., Guidi, S., Bracci, M., Andreadis, A., Zambon, R. (2020). I Do It Because I Feel that…Moral Disengagement and Emotions in Cyberbullying and Cybervictimisation. In: Meiselwitz, G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media. Design, Ethics, User Behavior, and Social Network Analysis. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12194. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49570-1_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49570-1_20

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