Do Self-Esteem and Trait Aggressiveness Moderate the Longitudinal Effect of Environmental Risk on Bullying Behavior in Chinese Adolescents?

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated the longitudinal effects of multiple environmental risk factors in three social domains (i.e., family, school, and Internet) on traditional bullying and cyberbullying and the moderating roles of self-esteem and trait aggressiveness in these relations. The present research was conducted by a four-wave panel design with 6-month intervals. A total of 358 students (40.5% girls) aged 12 to 14 (M = 12.89) participated in this study and completed the measures on research variables. Results indicated that participants who experienced more risk factors reported higher bullying perpetration scores at later times. Participants exposed to more risk domains reported more cyberbullying activities at T4 than those exposed to none or fewer risk domains. Besides, trait aggressiveness moderated the predictive effects of cumulative environmental risk/cumulative risk domain in bullying perpetration. However, these effects were not moderated by self-esteem. The effects were much stronger for adolescents with higher levels of trait aggressiveness than those with lower levels of trait aggressiveness. These findings can enrich the previous literature and provide some basis for developing interventions on bullying behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Traditional bullying
• cyberbullying
• self-esteem
• trait aggressiveness
• cumulative risk
• adolescents

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts to report.

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [Central China Normal University, China] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Program Funds of the Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality at Beijing Normal University [Project no. 2022-04-009-BZPK01] and the National Social Science Foundation of China [Project No. CBA210234].