CURVES AND LINES IN STATISTICS – THE IMPLICATIONS OF CURVILINEAR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VARIABLES IN A RESEARCH ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON VICTIM EMPATHY IN CYBERBULLYING INCIDENTS
Keywords:
cyberbullying, perceived online freedom of speech, victim empathy, curvilinear relationship,Abstract
In 2004, Suler referred to the online disinhibition effect, arguing
that online environments unleash aspects of individual’s personality
that normally would have been kept under guard, thus the online hate
speech flourishes. Another recent finding gives arguments for the
actual detached voyeurs’ generation, underlying that by observing on
screen, terrible things happening to other people, we develop our
own experience towards the victim, but at an emotional distance. The
more we observe terrifying events happening to other people, the
more they reinforce our sense of denial and detachment, thus
resulting a lack of victim empathy. Our research team has developed
the project Keeping youth safe from Cyberbullying, ID 2016-3-TR01-
KA205-036619 aiming to deeper understand the dynamics of
different cyberbullying aspects in online environments among youth,
by creating an online questionnaire composed by single item
research questions related to core concepts and perceptions about
cyberbullying motives and effects. Our focus is in analyzing the
effects of online freedom of speech agreement on victim empathy in
cyberbullying incidents, seen as two core concepts in bystanders’
mindset, in 140 high school students. Results show that when
modelling effects of online freedom of speech agreement on victim
empathy, the curvilinear model (13%) is more consistent that the
linear model (9%), even if both models show statistical significance.
Psychological and methodological conclusions and implications are
discussed.
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