Abstract
Different forms of verbal aggression are often present in cyberbullying, which may impair executive function skills that enable the regulation of emotions and behavior. Emotion and behavioral regulation has been associated with better social adjustment and more positive interactions between peers. This study aimed to understand if fostering emotion and behavioral regulation strategies could decrease aggressive communication. A quasi-experimental longitudinal design, based on a Twitter client mobile application, with pre-posttest measures was used. For the application, we explored different machine learning approaches, including computational intelligence methods. Multilevel linear modeling and frequency analyses were performed. A convenience sample of 218 adolescents (Mage = 14.67, SD = 0.84, 53% female) participated in the study. Results suggest that a Twitter client mobile application intervention based on emotion and behavioral regulation strategies may help decrease adolescents’ aggressive communication. Moreover, female and male participants who used the digital application tended to present distinct trajectories over time with regard to searching for information concerning prosocial behavior. These findings suggest that digital tools resorting to emotion and behavioral regulation strategies may be effective in reducing an aggressive communication style amongst adolescents, and consequently, promote resource seeking to engage in prosociality. These results can be significant for the design of intervention programs against cyberbullying.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Notes
Cyberbullying: The regulation of behavior through language [Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), PTDC/MHC/PED/3297/2014] and The Bystander Effect in Cyberbullying—taking responsibility and intervening through the regulation of behavior in adolescence (FCT, SFRH/BPD/110695/2015).
Developed within the project Cyberbullying: the regulation of behavior through language (FCT, PTDC/MHCPED/3297/2014).
References
UNICEF - United Nations Children’s Fund. A familiar face: violence in the lives of children and adolescents. UNICEF, New York, USA; 2017.
Patchin JW, Hinduja S. Bullies move beyond the schoolyard: a preliminary look at cyberbullying. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice. 2006;4(2):148–69.
UNICEF - United Nations Children’s Fund. The State of the World’s Children 2017: children in a digital world. UNICEF, New York, USA; 2017.
Weinstein A, Dannon P. Is impulsivity a male trait rather than female trait? Exploring the sex difference in impulsivity. Curr Behav Neurosci Rep. 2015;2:9–14.
Evans GW, Wachs TD, editors. Chaos and its influence on children’s development: an ecological perspective. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2010.
Blair C, Diamond A. Biological processes in prevention and intervention: the promotion of self-regulation as a means of preventing school failure. Dev Psychopathol. 2008;20(3):899–911.
Berthelsen D, Hayes N, White SLJ, Williams KE. Executive function in adolescence: associations with child and family risk factors and self-regulation in early childhood. Front Psychol. 2017;8:903.
Rueda MR, Posner MI, Rothbart MK. The development of executive attention: contributions to the emergence of self-regulation. Dev Neuropsychol. 2005;28(2):573–94.
Veiga Simão AM, Ferreira P, Francisco SM, Paulino P, de Souza SB. Cyberbullying: shaping the use of verbal aggression through normative moral beliefs and self-efficacy. New Media Soc. 2018;20(12):4787–806.
Lin Y, Durbin JM, Rancer AS. Perceived instructor argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, and classroom communication climate in relation to student state motivation and math anxiety. Commun Educ. 2017;66(3):330–49.
Baumeister RF, Bushman BJ. Emotions and aggressiveness. In: International Handbook of Violence Research, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht; 2003. pp. 479–93. ISBN 978–0–306–48039–3.
Kun B, Demetrovics Z. Emotional intelligence and addictions: a systematic review. Subst Use Misuse. 2010;45(7–8):1131–60.
Norström T, Pape H. Alcohol, suppressed anger and violence. Addiction. 2010;105(9):1580–6.
Sullivan TN, Helms SW, Kliewer W, Goodman KL. Associations between sadness and anger regulation coping, emotional expression, and physical and relational aggression among urban adolescents. Soc Dev. 2010;19(1):30–51.
Bandura A. Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2006;1(2):164–80.
Rosa H, Carvalho JP, Calado P, Martins B, Ribeiro R, Coheur L. Using fuzzy fingerprints for cyberbullying detection in social networks. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ). IEEE; 2018. p. 56–62.
Rosa H, de Matos DM, Ribeiro R, Coheur L, Carvalho JPA, “deeper” look at detecting cyberbullying in social networks. In, . International joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN). IEEE. 2018;2018:1–8.
Heck RH, Thomas SL, Tabata LN. Multilevel and longitudinal modeling with IBM SPSS. Routledge; 2013.
Hox J. Multilevel analysis: techniques and applications. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge Academic; 2010.
Beheshti Z, Shamsuddin SMH. A review of population-based meta-heuristic algorithm. Int J Adv Soft Comput Its Appl. 2013;5:1–35.
Zhou Y, Wang F, Tang J, Nussinov R, Cheng F. Artificial intelligence in COVID-19 drug repurposing. Lancet Digital Health. 2020;2:e667–76.
Fellous JM, Sapiro G, Rossi A, Mayberg H, Ferrante M. Explainable artificial intelligence for neuroscience: behavioral neurostimulation. Front Neurosci. 2019;13:1346.
Francisco SM, Veiga Simão AM, Ferreira PC, Martins MJD. Cyberbullying: the hidden side of college students. Comput Hum Behav. 2015;43:167–82.
Rachoene M, Oyedemi T. From self-expression to social aggression: cyberbullying culture among south african youth on facebook. Communication. 2015;41(3):302–19.
Norton RW. Communicator style: theory, applications, and measures. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; 1983.
Agarwal UA, Gupta M. Communication styles of millennials: trends & relevance for the industry. Indian J Ind Relat. 2018;53(3):504–18.
Jakubowski P, Lange AJ. The assertive option: your rights & responsibilities. Research Press Company; 1978.
del Pino CL, Sánchez A, Pérez-Nieto MA, Fernández M. Impulsividad, autoestima y control cognitivo en la agresividad del adolescente. EduPsykhé Revista de Psicología y Educación. 2008;7(1):81–99.
den Hamer AH, Konijn EA. Can emotion regulation serve as a tool in combating cyberbullying? Pers Individ Differ. 2016;102:1–6.
Lin M. Risk factors associated with cyberbullying victimization and perpetration among Taiwanese children. PhD thesis, Texas Medical Center Dissertations (via ProQuest). AAI10126751; 2017.
Jacobs NCL, Dehue F, Völlink T, Lechner L. Determinants of adolescents’ ineffective and improved coping with cyberbullying: A delphi study. J Adolesc. 2014;37(4):373–85.
Bridges LJ, Denham SA, Ganiban JM. Definitional issues in emotion regulation research. Child Dev. 2004;75(2):340–5.
Gross JJ. Emotion regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology. 2002;39(3):281–91.
Rottenberg J, Gross JJ. Emotion and emotion regulation: a map for psychotherapy researchers. Clin Psychol Sci Pract. 2007;14(4):323–8.
Ochsner K, Bunge S, Gross J, Gabrieli J. Rethinking feelings: an fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. J Cogn Neurosci. 2002;14(8):1215–29.
Mauss IB, Levenson RW, McCarter L, Wilhelm FH, Gross JJ. The tie that binds? Coherence among emotion experience, behavior, and physiology. Emotion. 2005;5(2):175–90.
Reisenzein R. A short history of psychological perspectives on emotion. In: The Oxford Handbook of Affective Computing, Oxford University Press, New York; 2015. pp. 1–34.
Scherer KR. Appraisal considered as a process of multilevel sequential checking. In: Appraisal processes in emotion: Theory, Methods, Research, Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2001. pp. 92–129.
Gross JJ, Thompson RA. Emotion regulation: conceptual foundations. In: Handbook of emotion regulation, Guildford Press; 2007.
Mauss IB, Cook CL, Gross JJ. Automatic emotion regulation during anger provocation. J Exp Soc Psychol. 2007;43(5):698–711.
Mauss IB, Bunge SA, Gross JJ. Automatic emotion regulation. Soc Pers Psychol Compass. 2007;1(1):146–67.
Taylor GJ, Bagby RM, Parker JDA. Disorders of affect regulation: alexithymia in medical and psychiatric illness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1997.
Gratz KL, Roemer L. Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Development, factor structure, and initial validation of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale. J Psychopathol Behav Assess. 2004;26(1):41–54.
Gratz KL, Tull MT. Emotion regulation as a mechanism of change in acceptance- and mindfulness-based treatments. In: Assessing mindfulness and acceptance: Illuminating the processes of change, New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, CA; 2010.
Hofmann SG, Asmundson GJG. Acceptance and mindfulness-based therapy: new wave or old hat? Clin Psychol Rev. 2008;28(1):1–16.
Roberton T, Daffern M, Bucks RS. Emotion regulation and aggression. Aggress Violent Beh. 2012;17(1):72–82.
Van Cleemput K, Vandebosch H, Poels K, Bastiaensens S, DeSmet A, De Bourdeaudhuij I. The development of a serious game on cyberbullying. In: Cyberbullying: from theory to intervention. Routledge; 2015. pp. 93.
Paiva A, Dias J, Sobral D, Aylett R, Woods S, Hall L, et al. Learning by feeling: evoking empathy with synthetic characters. Appl Artif Intell. 2005;19(3–4):235–66.
Batson CD. These things called empathy: eight related but distinct phenomena. In: The Social Neuroscience of Empathy, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA; 2009. pp. 3–15.
Dinakar K, Jones B, Havasi C, Lieberman H, Picard R. Common sense reasoning for detection, prevention, and mitigation of cyberbullying. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems 2012;2(3):18:1–18:30.
Kowalski RM, Limber SP. Electronic bullying among middle school students. J Adolesc Health. 2007;41(6):S22–30.
Olweus D. Bully/victim problems in school: facts and intervention. Eur J Psychol Educ. 1997;12(4):495.
Olson EA, Collins PF, Hooper CJ, Muetzel R, Lim KO, Luciana M. White matter integrity predicts delay discounting behavior in 9- to 23-year-olds: a diffusion tensor imaging study. J Cogn Neurosci. 2009;21:1406–21.
Crone EA, Bullens L, van der Plas EA, Kijkuit EJ, Zelazo PD. Developmental changes and individual differences in risk and perspective taking in adolescence. Dev Psychopathol. 2008;20:1213–29.
Bava S, Boucquey V, Goldenberg D, Thayer RE, Ward M, Jacobus J, et al. Sex differences in adolescent white matter architecture. Brain Res. 2011;1375:41–8.
Linacre JM. Winsteps® Rasch measurement computer program user’s guide. Winsteps.com, Beaverton, Oregon. Retrieved from https://www.winsteps.com/manuals.htm.
Ferrando P. Assessing short-term individual consistency using IRT-based statistics. Psicológica. 2010;31:319–34.
Rasch G. Probabilistic models for some intelligence and attainment tests. Chicago. IL: University of Chicago Press; 1980. (original work published 1960)
Wright BD, Masters GN. Rating scale analysis. Chicago, IL: Mesa Press; 1982.
Bond TG, Fox CM. Applying the Rasch model: fundamental measurement in the human sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 2007.
Smith EV Jr. Evidence for the reliability of measures and validity of measure interpretation: a rasch measurement perspective. J Appl Meas. 2001;2(3):281–311.
Fox CM, Jones JA. Uses of Rasch modeling in counseling psychology research. J Couns Psychol. 1998;45(1):30–45.
Rosa H, Pereira N, Ribeiro R, Ferreira PC, Carvalho JP, Oliveira S, et al. Automatic cyberbullying detection: a systematic review. Comput Hum Behav. 2019;93:333–45.
Zimmerman BJ. From cognitive modeling to self-regulation: a social cognitive career path. Educ Psychol. 2013;48(3):135–47.
Bandura A. Aggression: a social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; 1973.
Kirchner EP, Kennedy RE, Draguns JG. Assertion and aggression in adult offenders. Behav Ther. 1979;10(4):452–71.
Hinduja S, Patchin JW. Bullying beyond the schoolyard: preventing and responding to cyberbullying. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; 2009.
Hinduja S, Patchin JW. Bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide. Arch Suicide Res. 2010;14(3):206–21.
Bono R, Blanca MJ, Arnau J, Gómez-Benito J. Non-normal distributions commonly used in health, education, and social sciences: a systematic review. Front Psychol. 2017;8:1602.
Marôco J. Análise Estatística com o SPSS Statistics (7th ed.). Pêro Pinheiro: ReportNumber; 2018. Retrieved from www.reportnumber.pt/ae
McCoach DB. Hierarchical linear modeling. In: The reviewer’s guide to quantitative methods in the social sciences, Routledge, New York, USA; 2010. pp. 123–40.
Singer JD, Willet JB. Applied longitudinal data analysis: modeling change and event occurrence. New York, USA: Oxford University Press; 2003.
Weissberg R, Durlak J, Domitrovich C, Gullotta TP. Social and emotional learning: past, present, and future. In: Handbook of social and emotional learning: Research and practice, Guilford Press, New York, NY, US; 2015. pp. 3–19.
Ferreira PC, Veiga Simão AM, da Silva AL. Does training in how to regulate one’s learning affect how students report self-regulated learning in diary tasks? Metacogn Learn. 2015;10(2):199–230.
Funding
This study was funded by The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/MHC/PED/3297/2014; SFRH/BPD/110695/2015) of the Science and Education Ministry of Portugal, along with the Research Center for Psychological Science (CICPSI; UID/PSI/4527/2016), and in collaboration with INESC-ID (UIDB/50021/2020; SFRH/BSAB/136312/2018).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in our study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (Portuguese Ministry of Education, National Committee of Data Protection, Schools’ Board of Directors) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study, including their legal guardians.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Veiga Simão, A.M., Costa Ferreira, P., Pereira, N. et al. Prosociality in Cyberspace: Developing Emotion and Behavioral Regulation to Decrease Aggressive Communication. Cogn Comput 13, 736–750 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-021-09852-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-021-09852-7