청소년 사이버불링의 주변인 역할 행동에 영향을 미치는 심리적 요인

Abstract

Since the use of smartphones became widespread, cyberbullying has increased dramatically and became a serious problem among adolescents. Just like traditional bullying, there are many bystanders in addition to victims and perpetrators in cases of cyberbullying. Bystanders often play a major role in bullying by either perpetuating or stopping it. The potentially unlimited audience in the online world suggests that the role of bystanders may be particularly important in cyberbullying. However, little is known about the bystanders of cyberbullying and their causal factors. Given the situation, this study aims to identify factors that affect the three types of cyberbullying bystander roles, which are the defender, the outsider and the bully-follower. This study focuses on intra-individual factors such as guilt and shame moral emotions, attribution styles (attributions to perpetrator’s fault, victim’s fault, and both perpetrator and victim’s fault), defender self-efficacy, and perceived social status in class, which are already discussed as important psychological factors affecting bystander roles in traditional bullying. A total of 822 middle school students from Seoul and Gyeonggi Province completed questionnaires. Out of those students, data from 244 students who reported having witnessed cyberbullying in the past year, were analyzed. The results are as follows. First, the ratio among defender, outsider, bully-follower, and no role were found to be 36.8%, 29.2%, 22.6%, and 11.3%, respectively, for boys and 33.3%, 28.3%, 28.3%, 10.1%, respectively, for girls. Second, the relationships between seven psychological factors and three role behaviors were examined through correlation analyses, mean differences among three bystander role groups, and multiple regression analyses. The results showed that all of the 7 intra-individual factors seemed to be related to three bystander roles. Particularly, guilt-proneness, defender self-efficacy, attribution to the victim’s fault, and attribution to the perpetrator’s fault were identified as important factors in predicting bystander role behaviors for both male and female students. Based on the results, we discussed the effective strategies related to preventing cyberbullying.