The Relationship between Personality Dimensions and Cyber Aggression: The Role of Cyber Addiction Mediators and the Role of Moral Emotions Moderators
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Abstract
Background and Objectives: The relationships between personality dimensions and cyber aggression that are mediated by cyber addictions and moderated by moral emotions are not clear. As described in previous studies, the absence of models that examine both mediators and moderators is limited in explaining the roles of cyber addictions and moral emotions. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between personality dimensions and cyber aggression. In addition, the role of mediators on cyber addiction and the role of moderators on moral emotions were studied.
Methodology: The research group consisted of 870 students selected using multistage random sampling. The instruments consisted of the three-dimensional personality test, including masculinity, femininity, and impulsivity; the cyber addiction test; the cyber aggression test; and the moral emotion test. The data were analyzed using an analysis of the mediator and moderator variables using the SPSS Process package.
Main results: The results revealed that: (1) The relationship between personality dimensions and cyber aggression had mediators such as internet addiction and gaming addiction, (2) The relationship between impulsivity and cyber aggression in the male and female participants was moderated by guilt in opposite directions, (3) The association between masculinity and cyber aggression was moderated by shame only with the females, (4) The association between femininity and cyber aggression was moderated by both guilt and shame only with the males.
Discussion: Considering the outcomes from the connection between personality dimensions and cyber aggression in all paths, only online social networking addiction was not significant or not a mediator. An explanation could be that online social networking correlated with social skills which can protect persons from aggressive behaviors. The following study was a moderator analysis. In both genders, guilt was a moderator in the link with impulsivity and cyber aggression but shown in opposite ways. It was a positive direction in the male model, whereas it showed a negative direction in the female model. Thus, from this result, guilt was able to reduce aggression only in the females. Besides testing this path, the second path of masculinity-cyber aggression was examined. It was found that shame was a moderator in the female model in positive outcomes, both in the whole and in each sub-level of moderators. The final test was the connection between femininity and cyber aggression. It found significance for guilt and shame on this path only in the males and mainly gave a positive direction, while the most likely significant results on each sub-level of moderators gave a negative direction. From these results, it further showed that low level moderators were able to more effectively reduce cyber aggression than medium and high levels. In contrast, they could not wholly decrease cyber aggression in efficiency.
Conclusion: These results suggest that the relationship between impulsivity and cyber aggression in females should reduce when exposed to moderation from guilt. Moreover, feminine traits play a greater protective function in deterring both cyber addiction and cyber aggression than moral emotions. This reflects that moral emotions have a limited capability in decreasing cyber aggression between the paths of masculine traits-cyber aggression and feminine traits-cyber aggression.
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