Effect of Envy on Intention to Cyberbully in Social Network Sites

Abstract

Research analyzing the growing, worrisome phenomenon of cyberbullying in social network sites (SNSs) tends to adopt a cognitive perspective. This study instead investigates SNS envy, an essential emotion often experienced by users, and its relationship with cyberbullying intentions. The authors apply appraisal theory of emotion as a framework to conceptualize the effects of SNS envy, then propose two competing views: a direct effect premised in general strain theory and an indirect effect rooted in moral disengagement theory. The examinations of these competing views use survey data gathered from Facebook. The results support the indirect but not the direct effect, suggesting that envy influences cyberbullying intentions through moral disengagement. This study explicates how envious users rationalize their cyberbullying behaviors by cognitively reinterpreting existing perceptions of the advantages exhibited by envied others in a SNS, which reveals the importance of considering negative emotions to explain the unsettling cyberbullying phenomenon more fully.