Psychology of Violence, Vol 15(3), May 2025, 261-270; doi:10.1037/vio0000584
Objective: Although cyberbullying refers to proactive and reactive aggression, the cognitive mechanism regarding the component of reactive aggression is relatively ignored. Method: We addressed this issue by conducting a three-wave longitudinal survey with random intercept cross-lagged panel models in six Chinese universities (N = 1,258, 18–27 years, 55% females). Results: The results show that, after considering sex differences, within-person changes in cyberbullying were longitudinally predicted by a serial effect of hostile attribution bias and moral disengagement, and the within-person changes of moral disengagement acted as a mediator in the serial effect. Conclusion: The findings support the ideas regarding the novel cognitive mechanisms of cyberbullying from the perspective of its potential reactive aggression component, with moral disengagement playing a mediating role. Our results suggest that negative cognition tendencies may be an important risk factor for cyberbullying behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)