Moral Disengagement, Herd Mentality, Moral Identity, and Empathy in Cyberbullying Roles

ABSTRACT Cyberbullying has been explored in the literature, but predictive factors influencing the various cyberbullying roles and protective factors that might prevent it, still need to be understood. This study was conducted in China and adopted the moral disengagement theory. Meanwhile, this study added herd mentality as a variable to investigate whether various aspects of morality influence cyberbullying behavior. This study also explored the independent and interactive influence of cyberbullying on empathy and moral identity factors. According to the multinomial logistic regression analysis results, this study confirmed that moral disengagement significantly influenced cyberbullying using a convenience sample of Chinese internet users aged 16 to 50 (N = 878, Female = 414, Male = 464). Specifically, moral justification significantly influenced cyberbullying perpetrators and victims, and displacement of responsibility and herd mentality affected cyberbullying victims in particular. Therefore, moral disengagement and herd mentality might be core elements affecting the transition from cyberbullying victim to perpetrator. Notably, this study further affirmed that moral identity and empathy significantly reduce the risk of cyberbullying participation. These findings provide insight for social media platforms, policymakers, and educators to understand how the morality factors affect cyberbullying between different roles, so as to strengthen external and internal elements in cyberbullying prevention programs.