Dark triad personality traids and adolescent cyber-aggression
Introduction
Dark Triad characteristics
Machiavellianism
Narcissism
Psychopathy
The work here presented focuses on cyber-aggression in general. According to Grigg (2010, p.
152) cyber-aggression can be defined as ‘‘intentional harm delivered by the use of electronic
means to a person or a group of people irrespective of their age, who perceive(s) such acts as
offensive, derogatory, harmful or unwanted.’’
Cyber-aggression encompasses both cyber harassment and cyberbullying, along with other
forms of online aggression.
cyber-aggression will be used to refer to any act of violence that falls under this
general definition
Cyber-aggression, appears to be a considerable problem among adolescents.
This study focuses on three socially aversive personality traits – Machiavellianism, narcissism,
and psychopathy – known as the Dark Triad (Jones & Paulhus, 2014; Paulhus & Williams, 2002)
that have been theoretically linked to cyberaggression (Gammon et al., 2011), but not yet
empirically among adolescent populations.
Machiavellianism refers to manipulative strategies of social conduct that are not
correlated with general intelligence, and that do not necessarily lead to success
subclinical narcissistic personality includes a sense of importance and uniqueness,
fantasies of unlimited success, requesting constant attention, expecting special favors,
and being interpersonally exploitative
psychopathy, most researchers acknowledge the inclusion of three important
elements: an impulsive behavioral style, an arrogant, deceitful interpersonal style and
a deficient affective experience
It has also been argued to add antisocial behavior to this list.
Among non-referred samples, the three components of the Dark Triad have been associated
with both offline aggression and cyber-aggression. They found that aggression was highest
among those who scored high on narcissism, and especially among those who also show
psychopathic callous-unemotional traits. As a combined Dark Triad cluster, Machiavellianism,
narcissism and psychopathy have together been linked to children’s offline aggression. To our
knowledge the Dark Triad cluster has not yet been examined with adolescents’ cyber-
aggression.
This study investigates how all Dark Triad traits correspond to cyber-aggression among
adolescents
,Discussion
Investigating the relation between Dark Triad and cyber-aggression among adolescents, this
study shows that only psychopathy, and not Machiavellianism and narcissism are related to
cyber-aggression on Facebook among 14–18 year old.
boys outscored girls in the general mean scores for cyber-aggression, Machiavellianism and
psychopathy. There was significant stability in antisocial personality during adolescence.
,Using the theory of planned behaviour to understand cyberbullying: The
importance of beliefs for developing interventions
In this paper we will try to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings, using the Theory of
Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) as a starting point.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The TPB (Ajzen, 1991) posits that people’s intention to perform a certain behaviour is the best
predictor of their actual behaviour. The behavioural intention, in turn, is determined by three
belief-based concepts. An attitude (A) is a person’s global affective evaluation of a behaviour.
The subjective norm (SN) is the perception of what others think of the behaviour. The
perceived behavioural control (PBC) is defined as the perceived ease or difficulty of performing
the behaviour. As a general rule, the more favourable A and SN with respect to a behaviour,
and the greater the PBC, the stronger should be an individual’s intention to perform the
behaviour under consideration.
Beliefs underlying the attitude towards cyberbullying
A person’s attitude is based on his or her behavioural beliefs, whereby each belief connects the
behaviour to a certain affective, normative or moral outcome or attribute (Ajzen, 1991; Yzer,
2012). Previous research on cyberbullying provides a range of positive and negative outcome
beliefs that might underlie adolescents’ attitude towards cyberbullying.
Beliefs underlying the subjective norm towards cyberbullying
The SN is the perception of what others think of the behaviour and is formed by normative
beliefs (Ajzen, 1991). These beliefs include expectations about whether people from several
reference groups (e.g., friends or parents) think that the person should perform the given
behaviour or not (injunctive norm beliefs) (Ajzen, 1991, p. 188). The SN is also based on what
others actually do.
Beliefs underlying the perceived behavioural control
The PBC is defined as the perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behaviour, and is based
on control beliefs (Ajzen, 1991). These control beliefs refer to how likely a person feels that
particular factors could make it easier or more difficult to perform the behaviour.
Aim and design
The main aim of the current study is to test which behavioural, normative and control beliefs
are the best predictors of, respectively, A, SN and PBC with regard to cyberbullying. Following
the assumptions of the theory, we expect a positive relation between beliefs about advantages
of cyberbullying and the attitude towards cyberbullying, and a negative relation between
beliefs about the negative outcomes of cyberbullying and the attitude towards the behaviour.
CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
The results reveal that the theoretical model fits for the sample. Intention to engage in
cyberbullying is a predictor of self-reported cyberbullying behaviour six months later. The
attitude is the strongest direct predictor of intention.
The influence of this factor on intention could perhaps be overestimated. Contrary to the
expectations, the PBC, has no significant influence on the intention to cyberbully. The findings
, illustrate that in the case of cyberbullying, the attitude is mainly (positively) influenced by the
perception of cyberbullying as an effective way to vent negative feelings.
Moral feelings, on the other hand, are negatively related to the attitude towards cyberbullying.
These results are congruent with findings demonstrating the “protective” effect of these
feelings (or the negative impact of moral disengagement) on perpetration (e.g., Perren &
Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012). For intervention programs, this means that increasing empathy
for cyberbullying victims or referring to anticipated regret might be a suitable strategy.
(Dis)advantages related to peers (i.e., being less or more popular), also have a significant, but
smaller, effect on the attitude. However, the importance of peers becomes clearer when
considering the SN. (Direct) social pressure has the highest predictive value, followed by the
perceived approval of cyberbullying by peers (injunctive norm) and their concrete behaviour.
These results point to the fact that peers are indeed the most influential reference group.
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