"Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)."
The associations between cyberbullying/cyber
victimization and emotion attribution to a fictional
cyberbully and to a fictional cyber victim in a community
sample of preadolescents.
Enrica Ciucci
1[0000-0003-0401-2634]
, Carolina Facci
1[0000-0001-6222-2563]
and
Andrea Baroncelli
1[0000-0001-5435-9682]
1
University of Florence, Italy
enrica.ciucci@unifi.it
Abstract. The present study was realized starting from research on emotion pro-
cesses related to moral reasoning in cyberbullying, using a task of emotion attrib-
ution (i.e., positive and negative emotions) to a fictional cyberbully and a fic-
tional cyber victim. Specifically, we investigated whether the involvement in
cyberbullying or in cyber victimization was associated with differences in the
emotion attribution task. 528 middle school students (282 girls, mean age = 12.58
years, DS = 1.16 years) took part in the study. The results of a MANOVA showed
that youths perpetrating cyberbullying, compared to non-involved peers, at-
tributed higher positive emotions and lower negative emotions to the fictional
cyberbully. Moreover, youths involved in both cyberbullying and cyber victimi-
zation (i.e., the so-called cyberbully-victims) compared to pure cyber victims had
higher likeability to attribute positive emotions to a fictional cyber victim. The
findings were discussed in light of the role of morality and moral disengagement
in both traditional bullying and cyberbullying research, expanding the role of
emotion attribution beyond moral emotions. Furthermore, the importance of care-
fully considering cyber victims’ impairments in emotion attribution processes as
possible risk factors for the development of a cyberbully-victim condition was
advanced.
Keywords: Cyberbullying; Cyber Victimization; Cyberbully-victim; Emotion
Attribution; Preadolescence.
1 Introduction
Cyberbullying is a specific form of bullying in which a group or individual intentionally
uses technological means to attack selected peer victims; specific manifestations of
cyberbullying can be cyber harassment, cyberstalking, spreading of rumours, spreading
of private photos/videos, or online intimidation [1]. Even if research has shown some
differences between cyberbullying and traditional bullying (i.e., direct, verbal and rela-
tional bullying acted in face-to-face contexts), both phenomena are proactive forms of