Moral disengagement and adolescents’ cyberbullying perpetration: Student-student relationship and gender as moderators

There has been growing scholarly interest in understanding the relationship between moral disengagement and adolescents' cyberbullying perpetration. However, it is less clear which factors can diminish the strength of this relationship. Based on evolutionary psychological and the general aggression model, the current study sought to determine whether student-student relationships and gender simultaneously moderated the relationship between moral disengagement and cyberbullying perpetration. The participants included 2,393 adolescents from seven middle schools in China. They completed the questionnaires regarding moral disengagement, student-student relationships, cyberbullying perpetration, traditional bullying, traditional victimization, and cybervictimization. Results indicated that adolescents with high levels of moral disengagement were more likely to engage in cyberbullying perpetration, even after controlling for traditional bullying, traditional victimization, and cybervictimization. Student-student relationships moderated the relationship between moral disengagement and cyberbullying perpetration. Furthermore, student-student relationships and gender simultaneously interacted with moral disengagement in predicting cyberbullying perpetration. That is, higher levels of moral disengagement significantly predicted increases in females' cyberbullying perpetration, regardless of whether they had positive or negative student-student relationships. However, the relationship between moral disengagement and cyberbullying perpetration became weaken for males with positive student-student relationships.