Longitudinal associations among student–student relationship, moral disengagement, and adolescents’ bullying perpetration.

Adolescents with negative student-student relationships are at increased risk for bullying perpetration. Moral disengagement has been well documented as one of the main examined predictive variables of bullying perpetration. However, few studies have examined the mechanism of moral disengagement in the association between student-student relationship and adolescents' bullying perpetration. The present study examined the bidirectional associations among student-student relationship, moral disengagement, and bullying perpetration. Moreover, the present study tested the longitudinal mediating effect of moral disengagement and the moderating effect of gender. Participants were 2,407 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 12.75, SD = .58 at baseline). The cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) revealed that prior student-student relationship was associated with later bullying perpetration (βT1→T2 = -.11 and βT2→T3 = -.12), prior student-student relationship was associated with later moral disengagement (βT1→T2 = -.15 and βT2→T3 = -.10), and prior moral disengagement was associated with later bullying perpetration (βT1→T2 = .22 and βT2→T3 = .10). Furthermore, moral disengagement at Time 2 significantly mediated the association between student-student relationship at Time 1 and bullying perpetration at Time 3 (β = -.015). Gender moderated the mediating effect of moral disengagement. These findings highlight the importance of student-student relationship and moral disengagement in antibullying intervention programs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).