Examining Cross-Cultural Differences in Youth's Moral Perceptions of Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying has captured attention around the globe with research taking place in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. However, few of these studies have compared children and adolescents from countries with diverse cultural backgrounds, with research on Middle Eastern countries remaining scarce. To examine the influence of culture, gender, and participant roles in cyberbullying (bystander vs. perpetrator) on children and adolescents' moral evaluations of hypothetical cyberbullying events, participants read and evaluated four vignettes. Three sets of data were collected in Canada (n = 100), China (n = 100), and Iran (n = 101). Participants (N = 300; 49 percent male) were between 8 and 16 years of age (M = 11.73; standard deviation = 0.76). Two vignettes considered the perspective of a perpetrator, whereas the two others considered the perspective of a bystander. A repeated-measures analysis of variance showed that youth from Iran evaluated cyberbullying events less negatively than Canadian and Chinese youth. Regardless of culture, females evaluated cyberbullying events more negatively than males. Persian youth evaluated cyberbullying less negatively than Canadian and Chinese youth. With age, participants attributed less shame to cyberbullying behaviors. However, Chinese and Persian youth attributed more hubristic pride than Canadian youth with age. Also, Canadian and Chinese children rated perpetrator behaviors more negatively than their Persian counterparts. However, bystander behaviors were similarly negatively rated across cultures. This study breaks new ground by examining moral evaluations of cyberbullying according to participant role, culture, and gender. Findings from this study may be helpful to educators and policymakers to strengthen moral and diversity education in schools to help mitigate cyberbullying events.