What you think is a joke is actually cyberbullying: The effects of ethical dissonance, event judgment and humor style on cyberbullying behavior

摘要

This study examines the roles that gender, family economics, ethical dissonance, event judgment, and humor style play in cyberbullying. This cross-sectional study was conducted through an online survey, and 360 Chinese college students participated. The results show that boys have more cyberbullying (flaming) experience than girls and are more likely to use aggressive humor in daily life; girls feel more ethical dissonance than boys in denigration events, are more likely to correctly judge this as bullying, and more often use self-enhancing humor. Students from well-off families are more likely to use affiliative humor than students from moderate and disadvantaged financial situations; students from moderate and well-off families are more likely to correctly identify denigration as bullying behavior than students from economically disadvantaged families; and students from economically disadvantaged families perceive a higher level of ethical dissonance in flaming events. In addition, the variables were correlated with each other to a certain extent and significantly jointly predicted the three types of cyberbullying behaviors; event judgment and aggressive humor were the common predictors.