The Relationship Between Traditional Bullying And Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: The Longitudinal Mediation Of Revenge Motivation

Bullying has an important impact on the physical and mental health of adolescents.Adolescents involved in bullying showed more internal and external problems.Previous studies had found that traditional bullying and online bullying had a high degree of overlap,and adolescents who were perpetrators and victims would encounter more physical and mental problems.However,victimization and perpetration are two roles of inflicting harm and suffering harm in bullying events.How these two opposing states concentrate on the same individual has not been fully discussed.Therefore,based on the general aggression model and the frustration-aggression theory,the present study aims to explore how the traditional victimization of teenagers transformed into cyberbullying perpetrations.Students who have been bullied are more likely to have stronger revenge motivation,which will lead to the individual implementation of cyberbullying.Previous studies had focused on the possibility that retaliation motivation can increase the possibility of individuals taking revenge actions such as an attack,but few studies have examined the impact of retaliation motivation on the relationship between traditional victimization and cyberbullying perpetration.The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between traditional bullying and online bullying,and to examine the vertical intermediary role of retaliation motivation.This study adopts the longitudinal tracking research method.The participants of the study were the students of grade one and grade two in three junior high schools in Liaoning Province.The subjects were given the Child Bullying Questionnaire(junior high school version),the Retaliation Motivation Scale,and the Cyberbullying Scale.Four tests were conducted,with an interval of three months.The final effective subjects were 1130,523 boys(46.28%)and 607 girls(53.72%),with an average age of14.45±0.90 years.The findings of this study were as follows:(1)The traditional bullying victimization of teenagers positively predicted cyberbullying perpetration;(2)Retaliation motivation played a longitudinal mediation role between traditional bullying victimization and cyberbullying perpetration.The results showed that,the higher the degree of traditional bullying,the higher the degree of individual retaliation motivation,the more likely the individual is to engage in cyberbullying.The results of this study revealed the changes in the internal state of individuals in the process of traditional bullying victimization becoming cyberbullying perpetration,and verify the longitudinal relationship between individual retaliation motivation and cyberbullying after being bullied.This study revealed the psychological mechanism of the internal changes of teenagers and makes theoretical contributions to the prevention of bullying and the reduction of bullying in the future.