REGULATION DIFFICULTY IN CYBERBULLYING INCIDENTS

<doi>10.24250/JPE/2/2019/DR/ED/AFR/TD/SI/GR</doi>

Abstract

Emotional regulation refers to our emotional response to a particular situation. It is defined as the deliberate or automatic attempt of a person to influence what emotions to have, when and how to have them and how to express them.To tackle the relationship between helping attitudes and emotional regulation scale in cyberbullying incidents, our project Hate’s Journey, financed by Erasmus+, 2018-2-ES02-KA205-011733 has designed an online questionnaire composed by some single item research questions, general data collection and tests regarding emotional regulation, internet content awareness and helping attitudes. The hypothesis of this research is that between helping attitudes and emotional regulation scale in cyberbullying incidents there is a curvilinear effect. Research’s 206 participants are residents of Latvia in 24.8%, Romania 24.8%, Spain 24.8%, and Turkey 25.7%, 39.8% males and 60.2% females, age mean of m=30 years. In order to test our curvilinear hypothesis, we have used SPSS’ multiple linear regression analysis, based on multiple regression analysis for curvilinear effects, where helping attitudes scale was the dependent variable for the independent variables emotional regulation. As results show in Model 1 the model that supposes linear relationship, emotional regulation difficulty accounts for 7% of the variance in helping attitudes with an F=16.699 significant at a p<.01. In Model 2, the model that supposes curvilinear relationship, emotional regulation difficulty accounts for 13% of the variance in helping attitudes with an 16.323 significant at a p<.01.Results show that a very highlevel of emotional regulation difficulties and a very low level of emotional regulation difficulties play an important role in the process ofhelping attitudes display, acting like a buffering effect. Conclusions on further testing of a moderated mediation effect and implications are discussed.