Telematics and Informatics 35 (2018) 2028–2037

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Telematics and Informatics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tele

Self-esteem, empathy and their impacts on cyberbullying among

T
young adults
⁎
Vimala Balakrishnana, , Terence Fernandezb
a
Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
b
Spatial Media LLC., USA

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: This paper investigated the impacts of self-esteem and empathy on cyber bullies, victims and
Cyberbullying bystanders. Additionally, it also examined their impacts on emotional responses experienced, and
Self-esteem actions taken by the perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Self-administered surveys were used to
Empathy gather data from a large sample of 1263 young adults, mostly university students in Malaysia
Perpetrator
(Mage = 20.9 years; SD = 1.22). The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Toronto Empathy Scale
Victim
Bystander
were used to measure self-esteem and empathy, respectively. Binary logistic regressions revealed
Young adults no significant impacts of self-esteem and empathy on the participants, regardless of their roles.
However, self-esteem was found to have significant relationships with victims’ feeling angry and
reporting a cyberbullying incident. As for bystanders, self-esteem also had significant relation-
ships with feeling angry, sad, victim-pity and defending the victims. Empathy had no significant
relationships with any of the actions and emotional responses for bullies, victims and bystanders.

1. Introduction

Cyberbullying is “an aggressive, intentional act carried out by a group or individual, using electronic forms of contact, repeatedly
and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself” (Smith et al., 2008). It encompasses a range of technologies
including e-mails, mobile phones, personal websites and more popularly social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram.
Literature on cyberbullying prevalence is in abundance worldwide ranging from studies targeting school children (Song and Oh,
2018; Francisco et al., 2015; Wong et al., 2014; Wright et al., 2017; Kopecky, 2017) to young adults (Balakrishnan, 2017; Costa-
Ferreira et al., 2016; Crosslin and Golman, 2014; Yubero et al., 2017; Kopecky and Szotkowski, 2017a,b; Hong and Cheng, 2018).
Estimates of cyberbullying prevalence vary widely between studies (i.e. methodology; timeframe), samples (i.e. school children,
young adults etc.) and countries; for example, Palermiti et al. (2017) identified 11% and 15.4% of cyberbullying perpetration and
victimization levels, respectively in adolescents aged 10–19 years old in Italy. Sourander and colleagues reported 4.8% of perpe-
tration within the last 6 months based on their study among Finland youths aged 13–16 (Sourander et al., 2010).
Studies specifically targeting older cohorts (i.e. university/college students and working adults) have also reported cyberbullying
prevalence. For example, Kokkinos et al. (2014) reported 14% of bullies, 11% of victims and 33% bully-victims among 430 university
students in Greece, whilst Schenk et al. (2013) classified 7.5% of American college students as cyberbullies, and 2.4% as bully-
victims. Meanwhile, a Malaysian study targeting 17–30 year-old young adults reported approximately 40% cyberbullies, and 61%
bystanders within the last 6 months (Balakrishnan, 2015). The author’s extended work in 2017 revealed a similar prevalence rate

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: vimala.balakrishnan@um.edu.my (V. Balakrishnan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2018.07.006
Received 28 February 2018; Received in revised form 4 July 2018; Accepted 6 July 2018
Available online 10 July 2018
0736-5853/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
V. Balakrishnan, T. Fernandez Telematics and Informatics 35 (2018) 2028–2037

whereby 35% of young adults claimed to have cyberbullied someone, 44% to have been victimized whilst 70% to have witnessed a
cyberbullying incident within the last 6 months (Balakrishnan, 2017).
Cyberbullying is psychologically harmful, with impacts ranging from emotional problems (anger, fear, self-blame etc.), social
problems (low self-esteem, loneliness), physical problems (loss of sleep, eating disorder etc.), to suicidal ideations (van Geel et al.,
2014; Bonanno and Hymel, 2013; Olweus and Breivik, 2014; Holt et al., 2015; Kowalski et al., 2014). Recently, new studies on
investigating the emotional impacts of this phenomenon on the perpetrators, victims and perpetrator-victim have begun. For in-
stance, cyberbullying victimization is associated with higher levels of social anxiety (Dempsey et al., 2009), depression (Bottino et al.,
2015; Hemphill et al., 2015) and suicidal ideation (van Geel et al., 2014). Interestingly, perpetrator-victims have been shown to
display the highest negative scores on measures related to psychological health and physical health (Kowalski and Limber, 2013).
Studies investigating the emotional impacts of cyberbullying often attempt to explain the phenomenon based on empathy and
self-esteem. For instance, low self-esteem was found to predict cyber victimization (Cénat et al., 2014; Chang et al., 2013) whilst
others reported low self-esteem amongst both victims and perpetrators (Brewer and Kerslake, 2015; Kowalski and Limber, 2013;
Patchin and Hinduja, 2010). Interestingly, studies focusing on older students found no relationship between self-esteem and victi-
mization (Zacchilli and Valerio, 2011; Brack and Caltabiano, 2014). Empathy has been reported to predict cyberbullying perpe-
tration, with most studies associating lower levels of empathy to cyberbullying perpetration (Brewer and Kerslake, 2015; Ang and
Goh, 2010; Steffgen et al., 2011; Schenk et al., 2013; Kokkinos et al., 2014), and higher levels of empathy amongst victims (Pettalia
et al., 2013; Pabian et al., 2016; Doane et al., 2014; Kokkinos et al., 2014). In contrast, Schultze-Krumbholz and Scheithauer (2009)
found both victims and perpetrators to exhibit lower levels of empathy than those who are not involved, whereas others reported no
significant relationship between cyberbullying perpetration and empathy (Garaigordobil and Martínez-Valderrey, 2015; Pettalia
et al., 2013), and victimization and empathy (Renati et al., 2012). These inconsistencies may reflect variation in circumstances or
samples, and thus illustrate the importance of conducting additional research in this field. Studies focusing on bystanders are also
lacking, with the majority focusing on the motives behind their actions (or lack of it) (Brody and Vangelisti, 2016; Barkoukis et al.,
2015; Espelage et al., 2012; Bastiaensens et al., 2014), despite a high prevalence of bystanders reported in many studies
(Balakrishnan, 2015, 2017; Huang and Chou, 2010; Song and Oh, 2018). In fact, only two studies reported lower empathic concerns
among the bystanders to be one of the possible reasons for lack of interventions in cyberbullying incidents (Van Cleemput et al., 2014;
Barlinska et al., 2013).
Additionally, most published research on cyberbullying and psychosocial maladjustment have reported data from school students
(Kowalski and Limber, 2013; Mishna et al., 2010; Wright et al., 2017; Kopecky, 2017), leaving the older cohorts such as university/
college students and working adults to be understudied (Kopecky and Szotkowski, 2017a,b; Crosslin and Golman, 2014; Gahagan
et al., 2016; Hong and Cheng, 2018; Kokkinos et al., 2014; Yubero et al., 2017). Although literature show detrimental consequences
are associated to cyberbullying, not everyone is equally affected. Factors such as social support, emotional intelligence, empathy and
coping skills for example, have been shown to affect the manner in which cyberbullying incidents are handled by individuals
(Kokkinos et al., 2014; Pettalia et al., 2013; Doane et al., 2014; Schenk et al., 2013). An adolescent, for example, may not have the
emotional strength to handle the consequences of cyberbullying compared to a young adult. So, it is important to delineate the
psychosocial factors that are associated with cyberbullying perpetration and victimization among an older cohort to inform, and lead
evidence-based preventions and interventions (Schenk and Fremouw, 2012).
Studies investigating psychosocial impacts of cyberbullying are scarce, and to the best of our knowledge, have yet to be conducted
in Malaysia, despite the prevalence observed among young adults (Balakrishnan, 2015, 2017). This study therefore, aims to address
the gaps identified in the literature in several ways:

• First, this study is the first to be conducted in Malaysia, investigating the impacts of self-esteem and empathy within a prevalent
cyberbullying problem in the country. This is in reference to previous studies done locally that have focused on cyberbullying
prevalence rates among young adults (Balakrishnan, 2015, 2017).
• Second, unlike the majority of the literature that have investigated self-esteem and empathy on cyberbullies and victims, the
present study further extends the investigation to include bystanders, a group that is under-researched especially within the realm
of psychosocial maladjustment (Van Cleemput et al., 2014; Barlinska et al., 2013).
• Third, unlike many other studies focusing on young children and adolescents, the target sample in the present study are young
adults, mainly university students between the ages of 18–35 and who fall within a large demographic of active social media
users. This is important for two reasons: (i) it has been shown that cyberbullying still occurs among young adults after leaving
school (Balakrishnan, 2015, 2017), and (ii) literature reveals inconsistencies amongst studies on self-esteem and empathy among
different roles (i.e. perpetrators, victims or perpetrator-victim) (Brewer and Kerslake, 2015; Cénat et al., 2014; Kowalski and
Limber, 2013) or sample (i.e. adolescents vs. young adults) (Zacchilli and Valerio, 2011; Brack and Caltabiano, 2014).

2. Background

2.1. Cyberbullying and self-esteem

Self-esteem is defined as “a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the self” (Rosenberg, 1965), or as an overall evaluation of
one’s worth. Early studies on children’s physical and psychological well being and development found that those who have high self-
esteem are presumed to be psychologically happy and healthy, whereas those with low self-esteem are believed to be distressed and
potentially depressed (Branden, 1994). High self-esteem is often associated with people who are more assertive, pleased, and self-

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respecting, whereas people with low self-esteem are anxious, lack confidence, and self-critical. Self-esteem is also deemed as an
important predictor of personal and social well being (Orth and Robins, 2014).
Previous studies have demonstrated strong connections between self-esteem (either positively or negatively) to traditional bul-
lying, particularly on victimization. For example, people with low self-esteem are more frequently victimized than those with high
self-esteem. It has been suggested that individuals with feelings of low self-esteem attract negative attention from peers, provoking
specific bullying behaviors from others (Olweus, 1993).
Similar connections between self-esteem and victimization have been reported in cyberbullying research as well, however the
findings are inconsistent. For instance, a vast number of studies reported that victims tend to display lower self-esteem (Cénat et al.,
2014; Chang et al., 2013), however some researchers reported low self-esteem amongst both perpetrators and victims (Kowalski and
Limber, 2013; Patchin and Hinduja, 2010) compared to those that were not involved. Interestingly, studies particularly investigating
older cohorts such as university students are scarce, with results indicating no significant relationships between self-esteem and
victimization (Zacchilli and Valerio, 2011; Brack and Caltabiano, 2014). The mixed results between these studies, and particularly
between adolescents and young adults’ samples, suggest the importance of conducting additional research in this field.
It has also been reported that self-esteem is a significant predictor of cyberbullying victimization, whereas a strong self-esteem
acts as an important protective factor against victimization in adolescence (Brewer and Kerslake, 2015; Jacobs et al., 2014). It has
been suggested that individuals with low self-esteem may behave in a manner that signal feelings of cautiousness, implying that they
will not retaliate when offended or they will not defend themselves effectively (Tsaousis, 2016).
The review also shows that most of the studies investigating self-esteem have looked into victims (Cénat et al., 2014; Chang et al.,
2013; Zacchilli and Valerio, 2011; Brack and Caltabiano, 2014; Brewer and Kerslake, 2015; Jacobs et al., 2014), few on bullies
(Fletcher et al., 2014; Schenk et al., 2013) and bully/victims (Kowalski and Limber, 2013; Patchin and Hinduja, 2010), and scarcely
on bystanders (Van Cleemput et al., 2014). Individuals who score high on self-esteem are deemed to be more assertive and self-
respecting; therefore, one can hypothesize that such individuals would react (positively) to a cyberbullying incident. Contrarily, a low
self-esteemed person may be intimidated to react to a cyberbullying incident, and thus possibly resulting in the victim having low or
no support at all in defending him/herself.

2.2. Cyberbullying and empathy

Empathy refers to sharing the emotional state of another person through taking the perspective of that person and understanding
his or her emotions (Eisenberg, 2000; Cohen and Strayer, 1996). It is considered as an (i.e. affective empathy), which is the ability to
experience and share the emotions of others (Mehrabian and Epstein, 1972), and a cognitive trait (i.e. cognitive empathy), which is
the ability to understand the emotions of others (Hogan, 1969). Regardless of the definition, it is generally found that empathic
responsiveness is positively related to prosocial behaviors and negatively related to bullying (Miller and Eisenberg, 1988; Eisenberg
and Fabes, 1998). Findings indicating relationships between empathy and traditional bullying are often consistent, specifically
showing those with low levels of empathy engage in more frequent or severe bullying (Ciucci and Baroncelli, 2014; Jolliffe and
Farrington, 2006).
Empathy has been shown to be a valid predictor of cyberbullying perpetration as well, with cyberbullies being less empathic and
affective compared to those who do not engage in such behaviors (Lee and Shin, 2017; Mishna et al., 2010; Renati et al., 2012;
Schultze-Krumbholz and Scheithauer, 2013; Steffgen et al., 2011). For example, approximately 40% of students who engaged in
cyberbullying reported not feeling anything after committing a bullying action, whilst only 16% of them reported feeling guilty
(Mishna et al., 2010). Another study focusing on college students found lower empathy toward cybervictims predicted more fa-
vorable attitudes toward cyberbullying perpetration, and more favorable attitudes toward cyberbullying predicted higher intentions
to cyberbully (Doane et al., 2014).
In comparison, relatively very few studies have investigated the relationship between empathy and victimization. Cyberbullying
victims were found to have higher levels of empathy (Kokkinos et al., 2014; Pettalia et al., 2013), which may reflect a greater
sensitivity to perpetrator intentions in ambiguous situations. This is however, in contrast with Schultze-Krumbholz and Scheithauer
(2009) who reported that adolescents who are either cyberbullying victims or perpetrators exhibit lower levels of empathy than those
who are not involved.
Empathy also influences the likelihood that online bystanders will become involved in cyberbullying (Barlinska et al., 2013; Van
Cleemput et al., 2014). For example, a more empathic individual may intervene and react to a cyberbullying incident, either by
defending the victim or admonishing the bully.

2.3. Overview of the present study

Studies have showed relationships between psychosocial features and cyberbullying perpetration and victimization, albeit with
majority focusing on victimization. Additionally, most of these studies were also conducted in Western countries, with the majority of
them focusing on school children and adolescents (e.g. Brewer and Kerslake (2015) in United Kingdom, Cénat et al. (2014) in Canada,
Resett and Gamez-Guadix (2017) in Argentina, and Palermiti et al. (2017) in Italy, with very few conducted in Asian countries (Chan
and Wong, 2017 in Hong Kong; Ang and Goh, 2010 in Singapore). The study is the first in Malaysia to investigate the psychosocial
impacts of self-esteem and empathy on cyberbullies, victims and bystanders, and their relationships with the actions taken and
emotional responses experienced, among the young adults.
Literature revealed mixed findings between self-esteem and victimization, ranging from significant relationships (Cénat et al.,

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Fig. 1. Research framework.

2014; Chang et al., 2013) to no relationships at all (Zacchilli and Valerio, 2011; Brack and Caltabiano, 2014), suggesting variation in
circumstances or samples. In light of this, our first three research questions (RQ) are formulated as follows:

RQ1 – Does self-esteem predict cyber bullies, victims and bystanders behavior?
RQ2 – Is there a relationship between self-esteem and the actions taken by the bullies, victims and bystanders?
RQ3 – Is there a relationship between self-esteem and the emotional responses experienced by the bullies, victims and bystanders?

On the contrary, most studies have investigated the impact of empathy on cyberbullying perpetrators, with results indicating
bullies to score low on empathic levels (Steffgen et al., 2011; Mishna et al., 2010). Studies on empathy and victimization are not only
scarce, but have showed inconsistent findings (Kokkinos et al., 2014; Pettalia et al., 2013; Schultze-Krumbholz and Scheithauer,
2009). In order to investigate the effect of empathy, the followings RQs were formulated:

RQ4 – Does empathy predict cyber bullies, victims and bystanders behavior?
RQ5 – Is there a relationship between empathy and the actions taken by the bullies, victims and bystanders?
RQ6 – Is there a relationship between empathy and the emotional responses experienced by the bullies, victims and bystanders?

3. Method

Fig. 1 illustrates the framework used in the present study, indicating the psychological features examined, along with the sta-
tistical tests administered.

3.1. Materials and measures

Self-administered questionnaires were developed in English and piloted among 13 students prior to data collection. No mod-
ifications were made to the questionnaire as it was deemed to be simple and easy to understand. The final questionnaire had four
main sections, namely:
Part A: Demographic details such as age (continuous), gender (dichotomous), ethnic group (i.e. Malay, Chinese, Indian, Others),
status (i.e. tertiary students or working), and frequency of using social media in a day (i.e. less than an hour, 1–5 h, and more than
5 h) were solicited in this section.
Part B: Self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), a 10-item scale of global self-worth
covering both positive and negative feelings about the self. Sample statements include “I feel I do not have much to be proud of”, “I
certainly feel useless at times”, “I feel that I have a number of good qualities” and “I am able to do things as well as most other
people”. All 10 statements are measured on a four-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, 4 = strongly
agree), with summed scores ranging between 10 and 40 (i.e. higher scores indicate a higher level of self-esteem). A score value
of < 15 is considered to be low self-esteem. Previous research has established the validity and reliability of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem
Scale (Barnett and Womack, 2015; Cusi et al., 2010). For this sample, the Cronbach coefficient was determined to be 0.90.
Part C: The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ, Spreng et al., 2009) was used to measure the level of empathy among the
participants. TEQ consists of 16 (8 positively and 8 negatively worded) questions designed to measure the affective component of
empathy. Some positive statements include, “I enjoy making other people feel better”, and “I get a strong urge to help when I see
someone who is upset.” whereas negative statements include “I remain unaffected when someone close to me is happy”, and “I
become irritated when someone cries”. The statements are scored using a five-point Likert scale (Never = 0 to Always = 4), and
individual responses are summed for a total score ranging from 0 to 64 (i.e. higher scores indicate higher empathy level). The
reliability of the questionnaire is also established with a Cronbach coefficient of 0.801 for the current sample.
Part D: The final section began with a cyberbullying definition- “any behavior performed through electronic or digital media by
individuals or groups that repeatedly communicates hostile or aggressive messages intended to inflict harm or discomfort on others. This may
include saying mean and hurtful things or make fun of another person, completely ignore or exclude him or her from their group of friends,
telling lies or spreading false rumors about someone, and sending mean notes to make other people to dislike someone” (Balakrishnan, 2017).
Part D gathered participants actions/reactions based on their experience as a bully, victim and/or bystander. The questions began

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by asking if the participant had been bullied, bullied someone or witnessed a bullying incident within the past one year (dichot-
omous: yes or no). The participants were required to answer a series of questions if they answered in the affirmative. For example, if a
yes is provided for cyberbullying perpetration, subsequent questions include “Cyberbullying took place on social media”, “I knew the
victim personally”, “I knew the identity of the victim (not anonymous profile)”, and a range of emotions (e.g. feeling angry, de-
pressed, pity the victim etc.), followed by actions (e.g. I did nothing, I apologized to the victim, I told someone, etc.). The questions
were repeated for victims and bystanders, albeit with slight modifications. All the items were measured using a four-point Likert scale
(1 – Strongly disagree to 4 – Strongly agree; no Neutral). Cronbach coefficients indicate the measures used in Part D to be reliable as
well: cyberbullying victimization (α = 0.747), perpetration (α = .816), and bystander (α = 0.792). The complete questionnaire is
provided as Appendix A.

3.2. Sampling

Seventy-two registered students of the Probability and Statistics class were recruited to assist in the data collection as part of their
class assessment. To be specific, the students were grouped into 10 teams, and each team was asked to gather data from 100 to 150
participants, using two main criteria: (i) age between 18 and 35 years, and (ii) nationality as Malaysians. The sample size from each
team ranged between 85 and 144, with a total of 1288 participants.
Considering cyberbullying is an online social issue, the study mainly utilized social media, specifically Facebook to recruit the
participants. The students shared the survey link on their respective Facebook walls and Google drives. Using this approach, par-
ticipants fulfilling the study criteria and covering a vast region of the country were easily solicited. The overall data collection
exercise took approximately six weeks, from November 2017 to December 2017. The students obtained credit points for the data
collection exercise.

3.3. Participants

From the data collected, a total of 1288 valid responses were obtained. Outliers were omitted, for example, responses that were
not within 18–35 years of range, and entries containing all 1 s (Feldman and Lynch, 1988). The final sample consists of 1263 par-
ticipants (Mage = 20.9, SDage = 1.22), with the majority being females (N = 789). Table 1 provides the details of the participants.
Based on Table 1 above, the majority of the participants studied were university students comprising of both undergraduates and
post-graduates (98.8%), with the remaining 1.2% as working adults. As for ethnicity classification, most were Malays (66%), followed
by Chinese (18%), Indians (11%) and Others (5%). Finally, these participants are deemed to be active social media users after the
majority (53.1%) reported to spend more than 5 h daily on social media, followed by between 1 and 5 h (41.8%). Only about 5%
claimed to use social media for less than an hour daily.
Estimate of cyberbullying prevalence was approximately 20.3% (N = 257) for cyber bullies, in accordance with our previous
finding in which a perpetration level of 35% was reported (Balakrishnan, 2017). Of the 257 bullies, a vast majority (86%; N = 221)
admitted to using social media to bully someone, and 147 (57.1%) claimed to have known the victim personally. As for victimization,
a total of 385 (30.5%) participants claimed to have been bullied online in the past one year, in line with previous studies targeting
young adults whereby cyber victimization was reported at 44% (Balakrishnan, 2017) and 40% (Author, 2015). The consistencies in
these figures further support our finding that cyberbullying is still prevalent in the country, and among young adults. A further
analysis on the 257 bullies and 385 victims indicate 174 of them fall into the bully/victim category. More than half the sample
claimed to have witnessed online bullying in the past one year (53.4%; N = 675), a phenomenon consistently reported in other
studies, regardless of the samples/cohorts investigated (Huang and Chou, 2010; Song and Oh, 2018). Of these 675 bystanders, the
majority also witnessed cyberbullying taking place on social media (94.8%; N = 623), concurring with Van Cleemput et al. (2014).
Moreover, approximately 40% (N = 270) and 42.9% (2 9 0) of them personally knew the bully and victim, respectively.

Table 1
Demographic profile of the participants (N = 1263).
Categories N % Categories N %

Gender Male 474 37.5 Cyberbully Yes 257 20.3

Female 789 62.5 No 1006 79.7

Status Tertiary 1237 98.8 Cyber-victim Yes 385 30.5

Working 26 1.2 No 878 69.5

Ethnic group Malay 833 66 Bystander Yes 675 53.4

Chinese 227 18 No 588 46.6
*
Indian 139 11 Bully-victim Yes 174 27
Others 64 5.0 No 468 73

Social Media <1 66 5

1–5 528 41.8
>6 669 53.1

* Calculated from cyberbullies and cyber-victims.

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3.4. Data analysis

The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 25) was utilized to analyze the collected data. Preliminary analysis was first
administered by checking for outliers, data normality, and assessment of common method bias (CMB). As mentioned in Section 3.3,
outliers were determined based on participants’ age that was not within 18–35 years, and responses with all “1s” as entries (Feldman
and Lynch, 1988). As for data normality, the skewness and kurtosis values were checked, with results indicating all the values
between −1.98 and +1.98 (i.e. p-value = 0.05) (Hair et al., 2010; Mooi and Sarstedt, 2011), hence the data were considered
normally distributed.
The study used self-administered surveys, therefore, issues relating to consistency motif, social desirability, ambiguous items and
time of measurement, etc. could arise (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986; Feldman and Lynch, 1988, Baumgartner and Steenkamp, 2001;
Malhotra et al., 2017). The study adopted both the procedural and statistical measures to control the biasing effect. To be specific, the
items used in the questionnaire were mainly adopted from scales that have been validated previously, namely, Rosenberg Self-Esteem
Scale (Barnett and Womack, 2015; Cusi et al., 2010; Palermiti et al., 2017), TEQ (Spreng et al., 2009), and cyberbullying surveys
(Balakrishnan, 2018). Additionally, as stated in Section 3.1, the questionnaire was also piloted to ensure that the measurement items
were easily understood without any ambiguity (Wellington and Szczerbinski, 2007). Finally, participants were not required to specify
their names, email addresses or social account information, and thus participant anonymity was guaranteed.
As for the statistical measures, Harman’s single factor test was administered to assess CMB, on the basis it being the most widely
used test in the literature (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986; Podsakoff et al., 2003, 2012; Malhotra et al., 2017). The test assumes that if a
substantial amount of common method variance (CMV) is present, then a factor analysis of all the data will result in a single factor
accounting for the majority of the covariance in the variables (Podsakoff et al., 2003, 2012). An unrotated single factor constraint of
factor analysis was executed, with the results yielding a variance value of 22.03%; hence CMB is not considered as a major threat in
this study (i.e. cut-off point of 50%) (Podsakoff et al., 2003, 2012). Finally, the internal consistency reliability was assessed using
Cronbach coefficient (i.e. > 0.7) (Nunnally, 1978; Hair et al., 2010) as presented in Section 3.1.
Descriptive statistics, specifically frequency and percentages were used to examine the demographic profiles of the participants,
with the letters M and SD denoting mean and standard deviations, respectively through-out this paper. Binary logistic regressions
were used to predict the impact of self-esteem and empathy on perpetrators, victims and bystanders (i.e. dichotomous dependent
variables). On the other hand, Pearson correlations were used to determine the connection between self-esteem and empathy on the
actions taken and emotional reactions experienced by the bullies, victims and bystanders. Results are considered significant at
p < 0.05.

4. Results and discussion

This section presents the results for all the RQs formulated in this study. The prevalence rates for the actions, emotional reactions
etc. based on the specific roles (i.e. bully, victim etc.) can be found in Balakrishnan (2018).

4.1. Self-esteem – perpetrators, victims and bystanders

The majority of the participants scored between 27 and 29 for self-esteem, regardless of their roles (i.e. Mvictim = 27.5;
SDvictim = 3.9; Mbully = 27.5; SDbully = 4.2; Mbystander = 27.7; SDbystander = 3.8). The number of participants who scored low in self-
esteem (i.e. < 15) is small (i.e. approx. 2 for each category), hence indicating that the majority of the bullies, victims and bystanders
have high self-esteem in this study (N = 1255; 99.4%).
Binary logistic regressions produced surprising results whereby no significant impacts of self-esteem were found on bullies
(p = 0.317; Wald = 1.001; β = 0.18), victims (p = 0.069; Wald = 3.31; β = 0.29), as well as bystanders (p = 0.825; Wald = 0.049;
β = 0.09). Although our findings are in contrast with Brewer and Kerslake (2015) and Jacobs et al. (2014), they are in line with
studies that have focused on older cohorts (Zacchilli and Valerio, 2011; Brack and Caltabiano, 2014). Young adults generally have
higher self-esteem than the younger generations, as supported by several psychological studies that demonstrate self-esteem to be the
highest among children, declining in adolescence and gradually increasing into adulthood, before declining again in old age (Robins
et al., 2002; Orth et al., 2010). Therefore, our findings suggest that in young adulthood where self-esteem is generally higher, it can
be concluded that self-esteem has no dramatic impact on cyberbullying perpetration, victimization and bystander behavior.
Nevertheless, the victims’ self-esteem was found to be significantly and positively associated with feeling angry (p = 0.018,
r = 0.122), and reporting a cyberbullying incident (p = 0.005; r = 0.145). A pattern can be observed whereby victims with higher
self-esteem have a tendency to feel angrier when bullied, hence having a higher sense of empowerment to take action in reporting the
incident to authorities. On the other hand, individuals with low self-esteem, when victimized, behave more cautiously with the fear of
various negative repercussions should they report an incident. In other words, low self-esteem victims are prone to refrain from
retaliating when victimized (Tsaousis, 2016). No significant relationships were observed for other emotional reactions and actions for
cyber victimization.
With regards to bullies, no significant relationships were observed between self-esteem and actions taken, and emotional reactions
experienced. However, several significant relationships were found between self-esteem and bystander’s emotional reactions, namely,
feeling angry (p < 0.001; r = 0.154), sad (p = 0.001, r = 0.131) and pity for the victim (p = 0.001; r = 0.127). As for the actions
taken, self-esteem was found to be significantly related to defending the victim (p = 0.041, r = 0.08), and thus supporting our
hypothesis that individuals who score high on self-esteem are deemed to be more assertive and self-respecting, hence they would

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Fig. 2. Empathy distributions for cyberbullying victims, bullies and bystanders.

react (positively) to a cyberbullying incident. The fact that the current sample consists of young adults, who are deemed to be more
responsible and mature compared to the younger school-going children probably further supports this notion. This finding which
tallies with our victimization results can be seen in a positive light, considering young adults with higher self-esteem tend to take
more actions when a cyberbullying incident takes place. In fact, a further investigation on the actions taken by the participants
revealed that a vast majority (61.5%; N = 403) of the bystanders claimed to have defended the victims, which is in contrast with
Song and Oh (2018) who reported a higher score for bystanders being indifferent (60.7%) compared to the defenders (30.5%),
probably because the latter focused on school children and thus factors such as fear or not knowing what-to-do would have played
more significant roles.

4.2. Empathy – perpetrators, victims and bystanders

Estimates revealed empathy to range between 23 and 76 regardless of the roles, with the majority scoring high for empathy, as
illustrated in Fig. 2 (Mvictim = 57.7; SDvictim = 8.4; Mbully = 57.8; SDbully = 8.8; Mbystander = 57.7; SDbystander = 8.9).
Surprisingly, results indicate empathy to have no significant impact on cyberbullying perpetrators (p = 0.58; Wald = 0.297;
β = 0.05), victims (p = 0.87; Wald = 0.23; β = 0.01) and bystanders (p = 0.72; Wald = 0.127; β = 0.15). These are in accordance
with self-esteem results in Section 4.1, and thus it can be concluded that psychosocial features such as self-esteem and empathy do not
have significant impacts on cyber bullies, victims and bystanders, who belong to an older cohort. This notion is further supported by
an analysis of our data that showed the vast majority of bullies, victims and bystanders scored high in self-esteem and empathy,
respectively. Similar observations were found for actions taken, and emotional reactions experienced whereby no significant re-
lationships were found with empathy.

5. Conclusion

The present study addressed some growing concerns on the detrimental effects of cyberbullying on the social and psychological
well being of young adults. In particular, the study investigated the psychological features, namely, self-esteem and empathy and
their impacts on cyber bullies, victims and bystanders. It also looks into the relationships between these features with the actions
taken and emotional responses experienced after a cyberbullying incident. Results indicate that cyberbullying prevalence was
identified among young adults as perpetrators, victims and also bystanders, and thus, supporting previous studies with similar
findings (Balakrishnan, 2015, 2017; Kokkinos et al., 2014; Hong and Cheng, 2018; Crosslin and Golman, 2014), albeit data taken
from a different time frame (i.e. within the past one year). The fact that cyberbullying still exists after the schooling years is a cause

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for concern.
Self-esteem and empathy were not found to significantly predict cyberbullying, victimization and bystander behavior, probably as
the majority of the participants (i.e. older cohort) scored high in self-esteem and empathy levels. However, self-esteem was found to
be significantly related to the victims feeling angry, and reporting an incident. Similar observations were noted for bystanders
whereby self-esteem was significantly related to them feeling angry, sad, pity for the victim and defending the victim. Looking
specifically at the actions taken, it is encouraging to note that individuals with high self-esteem tend to report a cyberbullying
incident more (i.e. as a victim), and tend to deliberately stand up for a victim when they are a witness to a cyberbullying incident. No
significant results were found for the bullies. Additionally, no relationship was found between empathy and the emotional experience
and reactions within the sample taken in this study.
In summary, despite the prevalence of cyberbullying among young adults, no significant relationships were found between self-
esteem and empathy for cyberbullying, victimization and bystander behavior, hence suggesting that psychological features do not
predict such incidents among individuals with high scores of self-esteem and empathy. Nevertheless, the study showed that in-
dividuals with higher self-esteem tend to report victimization more, and tend to defend the victims as well.

5.1. Implications

The study showed that cyberbullying prevalence still exist among an older population, with victims and bystanders exhibiting
emotional consequences, especially feeling angry despite scoring high level of self-esteem. Although the sample seem to be able to
handle negative emotions well by reporting the incidents or defending the victims, interventions and emotion management programs
are needed for this particular cohort as well. For instance, self-compassion was found to alleviate individuals’ negative emotional
reactions when imagining distressing social events (Leary et al., 2007) whilst Chu et al 2018 found adolescents high in self-com-
passion tend to hold their victimization experiences in mindful balance, and more successfully deal with painful thoughts resulting
from cyberbullying victimization, rather than avoiding these experiences or exaggerating the extent of their personal suffering. In
light of this the present study recommends ways to strengthen self-compassion (e.g. imagery work, mindfulness based stress re-
duction, dialectical behavior therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy) (Barnard and Curry, 2011) in young adults as well to
help alleviate the detrimental effects of cyberbullying victimization and bystander behavior.
Empathy emerging as an insignificant predictor for cyber bullies, victims and bystanders can be seen positively as well. Empathy
is concerned with the understanding of emotions and prosocial behaviors, and since other studies on the younger cohort (Brewer and
Kerslake, 2015) have shown that lower empathy results in higher cyberbullying perpetration, empathy training may be better suited
to help the younger cohort. This recommendation is made considering the findings of the present study showed empathy to insig-
nificantly predict cyberbullying behavior (i.e. majority of the participants scored high on empathy). Other than empathy training,
other interventions such as Internet etiquette and healthy Internet use behavior can be included in anti-cyberbullying programs to
increase more prosocial online behavior (Ang and Goh, 2010; Zych et al., 2017).
Our results indicated cyberbullying is still occurring among the young adults, therefore it is important to further examine the
characteristics of this sample as well in order to get a better picture of the cyberbullying phenomenon. Strategic interventions
focusing on this particular cohort are needed since most research and intervention programs are targeting school children and
adolescents. This is especially more important considering the young adults who are mostly college/university students rely and use
technology more heavily, but have been overlooked in the cyberbullying research. Possible suggestions include age-appropriate
advertisement campaign against cyberbullying, educational and awareness programs on the serious implications of cyberbullying,
and the promotion of online pro-social behavior.
Encouragement should also be provided for bystanders to be more active in light of any cyberbullying incidents. Specifically,
professionals should consider designing interventions based on principles that enable individuals to become aware of their behavior
online and empower them to make ethically based decisions that may have a positive impact on the lives of all of the actors involved
in cyberbullying. However, although our results showed most cyberbullying incidents occurred on social media, not all such incidents
take place publicly and witnessed by others. Therefore, interventions targeting bystanders may indirectly reduce cyberbullying
prevalence and its impact by conveying to potential perpetrators that these behaviours are socially unacceptable, and by empowering
others to effectively manage incidents that occur. Thus, it is important that cyberbullying research continues to address the broader
social context within which these incidents occur, especially with respect to the role of bystanders.

5.2. Limitations and future directions

The study however, is not without its limitations. First, false reporting and social desirability could be a limitation considering that
the study utilized self-administered questionnaires. Though precautionary measures were taken to reduce biasness, future studies
may consider other approaches such as interviews or content analyses for a richer data, and for a better understanding of the
cyberbullying phenomenon, particularly targeting specific roles such as bullies, victims and bystanders. This would be beneficial to
design and develop prevention, intervention and coping strategies targeting these specific groups.
Second, the study targeted young adults in the country, however, the majority of the participants were tertiary students com-
prising of both undergraduate and post-graduate students. Working adults were only a few; therefore future research is needed to
determine whether our results can be generalized to other cohorts, including the younger generations as well considering our results
indicated no significant impacts of self-esteem and empathy on cyber bullies, victims and bystander behavior for the older cohort. It
would be interesting to investigate if similar findings are observed among the younger students.

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Third, the study was conducted within a Malaysian sample. It has been suggested that culture could play an important role in
cyberbullying behavior as well (Wong, 2016), therefore generalizing our findings requires some caution as well, especially to other
cultures. Fourth, the study focused on cyberbullying based on dichotomous questions (i.e. yes or no), and did not differentiate the
severity of the incident. Researchers such as Ortega et al. (2012) for example, has indicated the importance of distinguishing mild,
moderate and severe cyberbullying incident (and emotional effects), therefore future studies could explore these angles. Nevertheless,
despite these limitations, this study has made important contributions to the understanding of the impacts of self-esteem and empathy
on cyberbullies, victims and bystander behavior.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2018.07.
006.

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