Introduction

Cyberbullying is defined as intentional and repeated harm inflicted through electronic devices such as computers and cell phones (Patchin & Hinduja, 2015). The prevalence of cybervictimization, which refers to harassment received via information and communication technologies (Gini et al., 2017), reached almost 22% among adolescents in six European countries in the 12-month period covered by one study (Tsitsika et al., 2015). Jain et al. (2020) indicated that the majority of victims experienced more than one type of cyberbullying behaviors, e.g. offensive comments, gossiping, stalking or posting mean or hurtful comments and pictures. Being a victim of cyberbullying leads to severe psychological difficulties, e.g. internalizing problems, somatic complaints, social anxiety, depression, and attention problems (Gini et al., 2017; Landoll et al., 2015). Moreover, cybervictimization may also cause externalizing problems and delinquent behavior (Tsitsika et al., 2015).

The latest developments in research on individual differences in aggression have indicated that various forms of harmful behaviors depend on a relatively small set of personality constructs named the Dark Tetrad (Paulhus et al., 2018). The Dark Tetrad consists of four traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism (Paulhus, 2014). Although these constructs share a common core described as callous manipulation, each trait has its distinct features (Buckels et al., 2013; Chabrol et al., 2009) and is uniquely related to different forms of aggression (Jones & Figueredo, 2013). Narcissism is characterized by callousness and grandiosity, and to a lesser extent by impulsivity and manipulation. The core traits of Machiavellianism are callousness and manipulation. Impulsivity, callousness, criminality, manipulation, and to a lesser extent grandiosity reflect psychopathy, while callousness and enjoyment of cruelty are indicators of sadism (Paulhus, 2014). Dark personality traits are predictors of aggression, delinquency, antisocial tactics, and cyberaggression (Goodboy & Martin, 2015; Muris et al., 2017). The goal of the present study was to examine the associations between the Dark Tetrad and cyberbullying in the context of cybervictimization, taking the cognitive process of moral disengagement as an intervening variable. Drawing on general models of aggression, we examine the particular role of dark traits and possible routes between personality and situational factors (victimization) in explaining the likelihood of aggression perpetration via the Internet.

The Dark Tetrad and Aggression Models

The recently developed “bottom-up conception of aggression as based on the Dark Tetrad of personality” indicates that each trait of the tetrad responds to different provocations (Paulhus et al., 2018). This model suggests that highly psychopathic individuals respond strongly to physical provocations, while narcissistic individuals are sensitive to ego-threats. The sadistic personality is associated with enjoying behaviors which harm others, while Machiavellianism is related to aggression used to establish social hierarchies or to assert power. Paulhus et al. (2018) stressed that the complex personality × situation effects of the Dark Tetrad on aggression could be better understood by clarifying the context of aggression and cognitive mediators. On the basis of the Quadripartite violence typology (Howard, 2011), Runions et al. (2017) developed a model of four types of cyberaggression motives: rage (aversive-impulsive motivation), revenge (aversive-controlled motivation), reward (appetitive-controlled motivation), and recreation (appetitive-impulsive motivation). Combining both approaches, the associations between the Dark Tetrad members and aggression could be based on the different motivations underlying each dark trait (e.g. controlled-appetitive motivation for sadism vs. aversive-impulsive motivation for psychopathy).

Two general theories of aggression were used to illustrate the potential role of the Dark Tetrad in cyberaggression. The I3 model of aggression (Finkel & Hall, 2018) indicates that aggressive behavior is a result of three factors and their interactions. The first of these, instigation, represents “the net strength of the immediate environmental stimuli that normatively afford a proclivity to aggress” such as provocation (Finkel & Hall, 2018, p. 125). Impellance consists of such factors as antisocial personality (e.g. the Dark Triad) or situational qualities that influence how strongly the instigator, for an individual in a particular situation, fosters a proclivity to aggress. The third factor, inhibition, represents “how strongly this individual, in this situation, acts upon the proclivity to aggress rather than inhibiting that proclivity in favor of nonaggressive responding (Finkel & Hall, 2018, p. 126). In the perspective of the I3 theory, the Dark Tetrad could be regarded as the impellance factors which can lead to aggression in the context of social experiences being potential instigators of aggression, such as cybervictimization (Runions et al., 2017).

Similarly, the catalyst model of violent antisocial behavior (Ferguson & Beaver, 2009) posits that antisocial personality, that could be regarded as an effect of interaction between genes and family violence, interacts with environmental catalysts (e.g. stress) and subsequently leads to violent forms of aggression. Previous studies indicated that dark traits had heritabilities ranging from .31 to .72 (Vernon et al., 2008), but also resulted from low quality of parental care (Jonason et al., 2014). Various provocations were related to higher proclivity to aggress across dark traits (Paulhus et al., 2018) which indicates that such social experiences as cybervictimization could act as a catalyst for aggression among individuals with dark traits. Moreover, individuals with high dark personality traits are more likely to perceive ambiguous environmental stimuli as threatening or hostile and in turn respond aggressively (Ferguson, 2008).

Ferguson and Beaver (2009) posit additionally that there is an impulse control device that aids individuals in choosing how to respond to environmental strain through the cognitive processing of an environmental stressor, e.g. select whether a violent antisocial act is the most adaptive response. Since this device is located in the frontal lobes (Kennedy & Coelho, 2005) it could be related to moral reasoning that resides alongside impulse control in the frontal lobes (Sapolsky, 2004). Previous research indicated that moral disengagement, namely a self-regulatory process allowing people to behave in ways that conflict with their values without experiencing cognitive or emotional distress (e.g., guilt; Paciello et al., 2020), could mediate the relationship of psychopathic traits, sadistic traits, and cyberaggression perpetration (Nocera et al., 2021). Thus, according to the propositions of the I3 model and the catalyst model of violent behavior, we assumed that process of moral disengagement might be present among individuals with high impellance due to dark traits as additional disinhibiting mechanisms fostering aggression (Nocera et al., 2021).

The Dark Tetrad and Cyberbullying

The Dark Tetrad predicted cyberbullying and cyberstalking (Goodboy & Martin, 2015; Kircaburun et al., 2018; Kircaburun et al., 2021; Pabian et al., 2015; van Geel et al., 2017), and social media trolling (Buckels et al., 2014; Craker & March, 2016; Moor and Anderson, 2019). All four tetrad constructs show positive associations with cyberbullying. However, sadism and psychopathy have the strongest links and narcissism has the weakest ones (Moor & Anderson, 2019; Paulhus et al., 2018). Buckels et al. (2014) demonstrated that the associations between the Dark Tetrad and trolling were due to the overlap of dark traits with sadism. Narcissism was even negatively correlated with trolling when controlled for another dark trait. The weaker associations between narcissism and cyberbullying may result from the dualistic nature of narcissism which encompasses both adaptive (agentic) and maladaptive (antagonistic) features (Ackerman et al., 2016; Back, 2018). While the antagonistic component of narcissism (rivalry, exploitativeness) is positively associated with core traits of the Dark Triad (psychopathy and Machiavellianism; Ang et al., 2011; Trahair et al., 2020), the agentic component of narcissism differs from the Dark Triad (Rogoza et al., 2019). Thus, the associations between all dark traits and cyberbullying seem to result from the variance shared by other dark traits with sadism and psychopathy (Buckels et al., 2014).

Dark traits were supposed to lead to cyberbullying through higher normative beliefs about aggression (Ang et al., 2011), impulsivity, alexithymia or reduced empathy (Jonason & Krause, 2013), impaired moral reasoning (Karandikar et al., 2019), and moral disengagement (Egan et al., 2015). The last construct, namely moral disengagement, may be particularly important due to its strong associations with other potential mechanisms of relations between dark personality traits and cyberbullying mentioned above (e.g. reduced empathy, impaired moral reasoning). Detert et al. (2008) demonstrated that empathy and moral identity were negatively related to moral disengagement, while trait cynicism was positively related to moral disengagement. Thus, moral disengagement could be regarded as a unitary mechanism responsible for higher cyberbullying among dark personalities (Nocera et al., 2021).

Moral Disengagement

Moral disengagement refers to several interrelated cognitive mechanisms which are used to deactivate moral self-regulatory processes that normally inhibit unethical behavior (Bandura, 1986). These mechanisms consist of (a) moral justification (i.e. aggressive conduct is portrayed as perpetrated in the service of valued social or moral purposes and, thus, acceptable), (b) euphemistic language (sanitized and convoluted expressions used in order to describe destructive conduct make this behavior benign and relieve the perpetrators of a sense of personal agency), (c) advantageous comparison (when compared with reprehensible activities, the detrimental conduct appears to be of little consequence), (d) displacement of responsibility (the perpetrator describes their actions as resulting from social pressures or influence of others, and thus ceases to be personally responsible for the detrimental act), (e) diffusion of responsibility (division of labor for a venture with different members performing subdivided aspects that seem harmless in themselves but harmful in its totality; Kelman, 1973), (f) distorting consequences (minimizing or avoiding harm which a perpetrator caused by explaining activities harmful to others as made for personal gain, or because of social inducements), (g) attribution of blame (a perpetrator views themselves as faultless victims driven to injurious conduct by forcible provocation), and (h) dehumanization (divesting people of human qualities or attributing bestial qualities to them; Bandura et al., 1996). Previous studies indicated that moral disengagement was positively correlated with dark personality traits (Egan et al., 2015). However, according to the Paulhus et al. (2018) approach, some of the dark traits can benefit more from reducing guilt related to cyberaggression via moral disengagement processes (e.g. Machiavellianism), while other traits (e.g. sadism) might not need to alter the perception of aggressive behavior, of the victim, or the role of perpetrator in order to commit an aggressive act. Cybervictimization, considered here as a situational factor predicting aggression, was associated with moral disengagement, which in turn predicts cyberaggression (Bussey et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2017). Thus, moral disengagement can intervene between some dark traits (e.g. sadism and psychopathy) and cyberbullying, and between previous victimization and cyberaggression.

The Present Study

In the present study, we investigated the association between the Dark Tetrad of personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism), cyberbullying and cybervictimization. In line with the literature and general models of aggression, we expected positive associations between these constructs with stronger associations between psychopathy and sadism, and cyberbullying (Moor & Anderson, 2019). We also examined whether moral disengagement accounted for the associations between the Dark Tetrad and cyberbullying. We hypothesized that dark personalities would be positively associated with moral disengagement, which in turn would be positively related to cyberbullying. Previously, Wang et al. (2017) demonstrated that moral disengagement partially mediated the relation between trait anger and cyberbullying, while Ang et al. (2011) showed that normative beliefs about aggression intervened between the Dark Triad and cyberbullying. In the scope of prospective studies which indicate that victimization may lead to future aggressive conduct (Memba & Ostrov, 2021), we investigated cybervictimization as an independent variable predicting cyberbullying. Moral disengagement was higher among those who were victimized but not supported by others (e.g. a teacher; Campaert et al., 2017). Thus, we also hypothesized that cybervictimization might be correlated to cyberbullying though higher moral disengagement. Dark personality traits were correlated with cybervictimization and other forms of victimization (Hayes et al., 2021). Thus, we expected a covariance between the Dark Triad and cybervictimization. The hypotheses are summarized in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The hypothesized associations between the Dark Tetrad, cybervictimization, moral disengagement, and cyberbullying

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Method

Participants

A convenience sample of two hundred fifty-one adults (72.6% women; Mage = 28.54, SDage = 9.10; age range = 18–60) was recruited from social media advertisements. The participants had secondary (N = 96), vocational (N = 6), or higher education (N = 149). Participation in the study was voluntary, and the participants were not compensated. The inclusion criterion was age over 18 and consent to participate in the study. The sample size in the current study was above the recommended thresholds (N = 250) for obtaining stable correlation estimates (Schönbrodt & Perugini, 2013). The participants were informed about the goals of the study and completed on-line self-report measures anonymously. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee (decision no. KEUS 150/07.2021).

Measures

The Short Dark Tetrad Scale (SD4; Paulhus et al., 2021)

The scale consists of 28 items measuring four dark personality traits: narcissism (“special”: e.g. “People see me as a natural leader”), Machiavellianism (“crafty”: e.g. “Whatever it takes, you must get the important people on your side”), psychopathy (“wild”; e.g. “I tend to fight against authorities and their rules”) and sadism (“mean”; e.g. “It’s funny when idiots fall flat on their face”). Each construct is measured by seven items. The items are rated on a Likert-type scale ranging from 0 (Strongly disagree) to 4 (Strongly agree). The score for each scale was calculated as an average of the ratings. The scale was translated and back-translated with reference to the Polish adaptation of the Short Dark Triad (SD3; Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2019). The inspection of the internal structure of the SD4 indicated close to acceptable fit (χ2 = 655.641; df = 338; p < .01; GFI = .846; CFI = .870; RMSEA = .061; 90% CI = {.054; .068}; SRMR = .065). This result is also similar to the fit indices obtained in other studies using SD4 (Blötner et al., 2021).

The Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement Scale (MMDS; Bandura et al., 1996)

The MMDS consists of 32 items measuring eight mechanisms of moral disengagement: moral justification (e.g. “It is alright to fight to protect your friends”), euphemistic language (e.g. “Slapping and shoving someone is just a way of joking”), advantageous comparison (e.g. “Damaging some property is no big deal when you consider that others are beating people up”), displacement of responsibility (e.g. “Kids cannot be blamed for misbehaving if their friends pressured them to do it.”), diffusion of responsibility (e.g. “If a group decides together to do something harmful it is unfair to blame any kid in the group for it”), distorting consequences (e.g. “It is okay to tell small lies because they don’t really do any harm”), attribution of blame (e.g. “If people are careless where they leave their things it is their own fault if they get stolen.”), and dehumanization (e.g. “Some people deserve to be treated like animals”). Each mechanism is measured by four items. In the current study, we used the original 3-point rating scale ranging from 0 (Disagree) to 2 (Agree; Bandura et al., 1996). The score for each scale was calculated as an average of the ratings. Although the original scale was designed to measure moral disengagement in children, it was also used in studies with young adults and was found to be a reliable and valid instrument (Paciello et al., 2008; Rubio-Garay et al., 2017). The scale was translated and back-translated. We used the polychoric correlation matrix and diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS; Li, 2016), we examined the unidimensional structure of moral disengagement and found evidence of acceptable fit (χ2 = 510.871; df = 425; p = .003; GFI = .907; CFI = .949; RMSEA = .028; 90% CI = {.018; .037}; SRMR = .093).

The Florence CyberBullying-CyberVictimization Scales (FCBCV; Palladino et al., 2015)

The scales consist of 14 items covering four types of behaviors (written-verbal, visual, impersonation, and exclusion; e.g. Threatening and insulting e-mails, Ignoring on purpose in an online group, Violent videos/photos/pictures shared on the Internet). Participants were asked how often they had displayed (cyberbullying scale) or how often they had experienced (cybervictimization scale) particular behaviors/events during the past couple of months. Each item was rated on a 5-point scale, ranging from 0 (Never) to 4 (Several times a week). In the current study, we used a translated version of the FCCV scales following a back-translation procedure. The global score for cyberbullying and cybervictimization was used. The score was calculated as an average of the ratings. Confirmatory factor analysis using the maximum likelihood robust method (MLR) indicated that after introducing residual covariances due to modification indices to original models (Palladino et al., 2015), the cybervictimization scale (χ2 = 171.550; df = 57; p < .001; GFI = .910; CFI = .907; RMSEA = .089; 90% CI = {.074; .105}; SRMR = .071) and cyberbullying scale (χ2 = 154.015; df = 67; p < .01; GFI = .964; CFI = .906; RMSEA = .072; 90% CI = {.057; .087}; SRMR = .073) may be regarded as marginally fitting the data. In the present study, we decided not to transform positively skewed distributions of cyberbullying and cybervictimization according to suggestions concerning the advantages of such solution for sampling precision (Trafimow et al., 2018). However, square root transformation applied to both variables yielded similar results.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations between the study variables are given in Table 1.

Table 1 Means, standard deviations and intercorrelations between the study variables
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All dark personality traits were positively correlated to moral disengagement, cybervictimization (except narcissism), and cyberbullying. Moral disengagement was positively associated with cyberbullying, while cybervictimization was also positively related to cyberbullying.

Path Analysis

In the next step, a saturated multiple mediation model was tested in order to examine the mediating role of moral disengagement on the relationship between the Dark Tetrad, cybervictimization and cyberbullying. Path analyses were bootstrapped with 1000 samples and 95% bias-corrected CIs were provided. The structural model included covariances between the Dark Tetrad traits and cybervictimization. The results are given in Table 2.

Table 2 Standardized estimates of total, direct, and indirect effects of the Dark Tetrad and cybervictimization, moral disengagement and cyberbullying
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The path analysis indicated that moral disengagement was positively associated with Machiavellianism (β = .232; p < .001), sadism (β = .195; p = .009), and cybervictimization (β = .156; p = .035). Cyberbullying was positively related to sadism (β = .198; p = .022) and cybervictimization (β = .336; p = .006). None of the indirect associations were significant. Cybervictimization was correlated with Machiavellianism (β = .142; p = .022), psychopathy (β = .166; p = .037), and sadism (β = .180; p = .021). The model accounted for 21.8% of variance in moral disengagement, and 27.3% of variance in cyberbullying.

Discussion

The current study verified the positive associations between the dark personality traits and antisocial online behaviors (Moor & Anderson, 2019). Consistently with Paulhus et al. (2018), narcissism was found to be only weakly correlated with cyberbullying, and not significantly correlated with cybervictimization. In the present study, narcissism was measured using the Short Tetrad Scale (SD4) which assesses primarily the admiration component of narcissism (Trahair et al., 2020). However, cyberbullying appeared to be related to the antagonistic core of the Dark Tetrad (Buckels et al., 2014) which is at least related to rivalry component of narcissism (Trahair et al., 2020). Although other studies demonstrated a role of narcissistic leadership in cyberbullying (Schade et al., 2021), the magnitude of this relationship was relatively weak. Future studies should investigate the association of more nuanced dimensions of narcissism (antagonistic or vulnerable components) and cyberbullying when controlled for other dark traits. Moreover, narcissistic individuals could engage in cyberbullying only in a particular situations of ego-threat aiming at face-restoration (Goodboy & Martin, 2015). Thus, future studies should investigate not only the frequency of cyberbullying, but also its motivations to better describe the role of narcissism in cyberaggression. Generally, sadism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were positively associated with cyberbullying and cybervictimization in the present study, which was consistent with previous findings (e.g. Kircaburun et al., 2021). These results indicate that cyberbullying perpetration may be associated with callousness which characterizes Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, but also with the manipulativeness characteristic of Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and the enjoyment of cruelty present in sadism (Paulhus, 2014). The finding from path analysis indicated that, when controlled for shared variance between Dark Tetrad traits, only sadism appeared to be significantly associated with cyberbullying. This may indicate that callousness and enjoyment of cruelty may fuel cyberbullying perpetration the most. In the light of the Quadripartite violence typology (Runions et al., 2017), sadistic personality promotes reward-motivated (appetitive-controlled) cyberaggression. Thus, from the Dark Tetrad perspective, cyberbullying appears to be related to enjoying cruelty, which is the essence of sadism (Buckels et al., 2014).

Cybervictimization was higher among individuals reporting higher Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. This finding may indicate that engagement in antisocial behaviors online is also associated with higher danger of becoming a victim of these behaviors, which next lead to cyberbullying perpetration (Eraslan-Çapan & Bakioğlu, 2020). Individuals who experienced cybervictimization can become offenders on the Internet due to their revenge motivation (Runions et al., 2017).

Machiavellianism and sadism were correlated with moral disengagement. This result is consistent with previous findings indicating high importance of Machiavellianism in the development of moral disengagement mechanisms (Sijtsema et al., 2019). Sadism and psychopathy were also found to be correlated with moral disengagement (Nocera et al., 2021). The study also showed that moral disengagement mechanisms could be used by victims of cyberbullying (Hymel et al., 2005). Although moral disengagement was correlated with cyberbullying, it was not significantly associated with cyberbullying in path analyses. The results indicate that the potentially vindictive or sadistic motivations of cyberbullying were more pronounced compared to moral distancing from the victim. Thus, revenge and the rewarding outcomes of cyberbullying perpetration can be associated with increased likelihood of cyberaggression more straightforwardly, without activating an internal moral conflict over potential aggressive behavior that has to be inhibited through moral disengagement. Therefore, moral disengagement did not account for the associations between the Dark Tetrad or cybervictimization and cyberbullying. This result is not consistent with the latest findings which demonstrated that moral distancing partially accounted for associations between psychopathy, sadism and cyberbullying (Nocera et al., 2021). Nocera et al. (2021) demonstrated only partial mediation between psychopathy and sadism, and cyberbullying due to moral disengagement. However, in the study by Nocera et al. (2021) did not control for cybervictimization. The present study demonstrated that moral disengagement could be non-necessary for individuals with dark traits (particularly sadism) or those who were victimized in order to justify their aggressive behaviors on-line.

The present study has some limitations. First, its cross-sectional design precludes inferring causality in path analysis. Thus, particularly the role of cybervictimization in the context of the Dark Tetrad and as a potential cause of moral disengagement should be examined in future through a longitudinal design. Second, the mechanisms of moral disengagement should be examined in future studies using more adult-dedicated methods of measurement (Detert et al., 2008). Since the perpetration of cyberbullying behavior was more frequent among men and boys (e.g. Kircaburun et al., 2021), future studies should also focus on balancing the proportion of men and women in the study sample. Third, poor fit of the cyberbullying/cybervictimization scale used in the present study might result in underestimation of the association between the Dark Tetrad and cyberbullying. Although both the cybervictimization and the cyberbullying scale had satisfactory internal consistency, for future research it could be important to distinguish between possible types of cyberbullying/cybervictimization similarly to studies on trolling (Buckels et al., 2014). The Dark Tetrad traits mean levels were lower in our sample compared to those reported in the construction study (Paulhus et al., 2021). Future studies should examine statistical invariance of the SD4 in the U.S. and in Poland in order to detect whether cultural differences can moderate the associations between the Dark Tetrad and cyberbullying in these two cultural contexts.

The present study demonstrated that cyberbullying behaviors were positively associated with Machiavellianism and sadism, but were also related to cybervictimization. Although moral disengagement mechanisms were correlated with cyberbullying, the path analysis indicated that cyberbullying seemed to be fueled by revenge and callousness, and enjoyment of cruelty. The model proposed in Fig. 1 was positively verified, except the intervening role of moral disengagement. The Dark Tetrad could be regarded as a personality risk factor of cyberbullying perpetration, but also cybervictimization.

The findings from the present study may be useful in detecting cyberbullying online. Recently, machine-learning algorithms relying on user personality indicators have been positively verified in cyberbullying detection on Twitter (Balakrishnan et al., 2019). The development of methods to detect signals of sadistic callousness and enjoyment of cruelty may help to better detect and block users with malevolent intentions. Moreover, the demonstrated role of cybervictimization indicates that prevention of exposure to cyberbullying may be also a method of preventing the cyberbullying itself. In the perspective of the catalyst model of violent antisocial behavior (Ferguson & Beaver, 2009) and of the I3 theory of aggression (Finkel & Hall, 2018), the combination of dark personality traits and cybervictimization should be regarded as a particularly significant indicator of heightened proclivity to aggress in the online environment. Thus, public policy could focus primarily on limiting possibilities to anonymously publish cruel content on the Internet by implementing better detection policies in social media in order to avoid victimization. Secondly, training impulse control abilities addressed specifically to at-risk youth who will become Internet users could help in the inhibition of future cyberbullying (Ferguson et al., 2007).