Cyber Psychology & Cyberbullying

CYBER PSYCHOLOGY
& CYBERBULLYING:
Life in a
Virtual World
Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts
warrenblumenfeld@gmail.com

The Birth of CyberPsychology
John Suler
Introductory Video

AGENDA
1. Cyber Psychology
2. The “Online Disinhibition Effect”
3. Cyber Time
4. Cyber Space & Postmodernism
5. Freud Peering from the Computer
6. Bullying & Cyberbullying
7. Instances of Cyberbullying
8. What Can Be Done?
9. Suggestions for Targets of Cyberbullying

Cyber Psychology
• The nature of social communication
technologies combined with relative
anonymity of cyberspace create
conditions for users to experience less
behavioral inhibitions than in Real Life
(RL) or Face-To-Face (f2f) situations.
• Altered state of consciousness

The “Online Disinhibition Effect”
(Suler)
• Positive:
– through anonymity of cyberspace, users
can exhibit extraordinary acts of kindness
or charity that they may have felt
inhibited from expressing in RL

The “Online Disinhibition Effect”
• Negative:
– this anonymity and altered psychological
environment may allow users to
communicate more objectionable needs
and desires onto others.

Cyber Time
• Exists Asynchronically:
– people often do not have to interact in
real time, which can add to the
disinhibition effect when one does not
have to deal with the immediate reactions
of others.
(Turkel)

Cyber Space
• Transcends Distance:
– virtually shrinking space making geography
irrelevant.
– Advantages: can bring people closer together,
making a virtual world community.
– Disadvantages: for people with anti-social
motives, the nature of social communication
technologies can enable users to abuse others
not only next door, but also on other side of
planet.

Cyber Space
• Personae:
– people can alter, change, emphasize different
aspects of their personalities or identities,
– or totally reinvent themselves
– show different personae (Latin “that through
which the sound comes” or the actor’s mask)
(Turkel)

Cyber Space
• Avatar:
–individuals can engage in masquerade
–change into a virtual costume known as an
“avatar.”

Cyber Space
• Communicating only with typed text in
social communication technologies,
• Users have options:
–being oneself
–expressing only parts of one’s identity
– assuming imagined identities
–remaining completely anonymous
(Suler)

Cyber Space: Postmodernism
• Computers embody postmodernism’s
important tenets:
– challenging
– contesting
– ultimately destabilizing identities.
• individuals continually redeploy identities as
fluid
• changing
• multifaceted
• non-essentialized

Identity destabilization presents many possibilities
• Positive:
– can allow individuals to relate in genuinely open and
honest ways about themselves that might be frightening
offline to discuss in real life personal encounters.
• Negative:
– with anonymity, individual can act out hostile or
sadistic emotions by abusing others online.
(Suler)

• Equalizing Effect:
– People begin on a relatively level playing field.
– Virtual net democracy dependent largely on technical
skills of user.
– Regardless of social status:
• Wealth, Race, Sex, Sexual & Gender Identity & Expression,
Physical & Mental Attributes, & many other social identities
(Suler)

Cyber Space
• Altered Perceptions:
– transitional space that becomes extension of
user’s intrapsychic world
– cyberspace communication can alter perceptions
and one’s state of consciousness by becoming:
• make-believe world
• dream-like experience
• even a game where rules of RL no longer apply
This may explain forms of computer and cyberspace
addictions.

College students throughout the world were
asked to go 24 hours without digital media:

Freud Peering from the Computer

• Transference:
– individual’s unconscious redirection of feelings from
one person to another.
– Kapelovitz: “the inappropriate repetition in the present
of a relationship that was important in a person's
childhood.”
– Suler: “we recreate in our relationship with the
computer some aspect of how we related to our family
members.”
– cyberspace can recreate & replay past relationships,
satisfy unmet, frozen, or thwarted needs from childhood

• Erotic Transference:
– Suler: does not consist of sexual feeling per se toward
computers
– “the perception of the computer as powerful, perhaps in
ways similar to how parents are perceived as powerful.”

• Erotic Transference & Cyber Abuse:
– Technologies provide users means to act out unmet
needs for power and control over others,
– to transfer frozen needs for attention or
acknowledgement not sufficiently satisfied within
the family constellation

Cyber Space Overall
Can inhibit a user’s sense of
responsibility for actions online

Bullying Defined
“Bullying is a specific type of aggression
in which:
1. the behavior is intended to harm or
disturb,
2. The behavior occurs repeatedly over
time,
3. There is an imbalance of power, with
a more powerful person or group
attacking a less powerful one.”
(JAMA, 2001)

Bullying Can Take At Least
Three Forms:
1. Physical: hitting, kicking, spitting,
pushing, taking personal belongings.
2. Verbal: taunting, malicious teasing,
name calling, making threats.
3. Psychological: spreading rumors,
manipulating social relationships, or
engaging in social exclusion, extortion,
or intimidation.
(U.S. Department of Justice, 2001)

Harassment Defined
• Harassment is victimization based upon one’s real or
perceived race, color, national origin, religion,
disability, gender, sexual orientation, or marital
status, physical appearance, or personality
characteristics.
• May include but not limited to:
– Verbal, nonverbal, physical, or written harassment
– Repeated remarks of demeaning nature
– Implied or explicit threats
– Demeaning jokes, stories, or activities
– Unreasonable interference with a student’s performance
(Iowa Department of Education)

Family Risk Factors:
Some child-rearing styles found to predict whether
young people will grow up to exhibit aggressive
bullying behaviors:
– Lack of warmth & involvement by parents.
– Overly-permissive overly-harsh parenting
– Harsh, physical discipline.
– Family/community model/support bullying behaviors.
– Victimization by older siblings
Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber

Peer Risk Factors:
– Lack maturity or insight
– Friends have positive attitudes about violence.
– High status aggressive persons seek to enhance
their social power and protect their prestige with
peers.
– Low social status people seek to deflect taunting
and aggression, or enhance their social position
with higher status peers.
– Social/relational aggression creates excitement,
alleviates boredom, & secures friendships.

People Who Bully
A+
• Imagination
• Spontaneity
D-
•Impulse
control
•Empathy

Perpetrators of Hate Crimes by Age
LA County, 2009

Perpetrators of violent crimes by sex
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
85% 90% 91% 95% 95% 95% 99.8%
Females
Males
FBI 2009

38%
27%
35%
% of students who do
nothing
% of students who
wantto help, but
don't
% of students who
try to help
Bystander Behavior
in Bullying Incidents
© The Olweus Prevention Group, 2004

12-17
18-29
30-49
50-64
65+
93%
93%
81%
70%
38%
Internet Usage by Age
Pew Internet, 2009
Pew Internet, 2009
⌘

Cyberbullying Defined
“Cyberbullying involves the use of
information and communication
technologies such as e-mail, cell
phone and pager text messages,
instant messaging, defamatory
personal Web sites, and defamatory
online personal polling Web sites, to
support deliberate, repeated, and
hostile behaviour by an individual
or group, that is intended to harm
others.”
(Belsey)

Similarities & Differences Between
Face-To-Face Bullying &
Cyberbullying
• Similar: Both are about human
relationships, power, and control, and
actions can occur on numerous occasions
(www.bullying.org).
• Similar: Both may involve what
psychologists call the “Leveling Effect”:
people who bully often do so to diminish
others to inflate their own egos reflecting
their insecurities.

• Similar: Both do not simply involve those who
bully and those who are bullied (the “dyadic
view,”) but rather involve a number of “actors”
or roles across the social/school environment.
– People Who Bully
– Assistant or Follower of People Who Bully
– Encourager or Reinforcer of People Who Bully
– Outsider or “Bystander” Who Does Nothing
– Potential Defender or Ally of People Who Are Bullied
– Defender or Ally of People Who Are Bullied
– People Who Are Bullied
• (Sutton & Smith, 1999; Olweus, 1993)

• Different: Users of technology often do
things in cyberspace that they would not
ordinarily do in face-to-face (F2F) or real
life (RL) interactions—the “disinhibition
effect.” (Suler, 2001)
• Different: Cyberbullying is often even more
invisible to adults than other forms of
bullying.
• Different: Cyberbullying is a particularly
cowardly form of bullying. Cyberbullies can
often hide in the anonymity of cyberspace.

• Different: With anonymity, cyberbullies
do not have to “own” their actions, and
often do not fear being punished.
• Different: Cyberbullies can inflict pain
without having to see the effects, which
can result in a “deeper level of
meanness.” (Harmon, 2004)
• Different: The technology can shelter the
user from tangible feedback about
consequences of one’s actions, which can
result in minimized empathy or remorse.
(Media Awareness Network)

• Different: People can alter, change, or
emphasize different aspects of their
personalities or identities in
cyberspace—they can reinvent
themselves or show different per sonae
(Latin for “that through which the
sound comes” or the actor’s mask).
(Turkle, 1995)

• Different: Cyberbullies can
communicate their hurtful messages to
a very wide audience with remarkable
speed.
• Different: Cyberbullying is often
outside the legal reach of schools and
school boards when it occurs outside of
school.

• Different: Victims are often fearful of
telling others about being bullied because
they fear that reporting it would result in
adults taking away cell phones, computers,
or other forms of technology.
• Different: Victims may not know who the
cyberbully is since they may not be easily
identifiable.
• Different: Cyberbullying can occur any
time and any place. Home, therefore, is no
longer a refuge from peer bullying.

Instances of Cyberbullying
• People sending hurtful, cruel, and oftentimes
threatening messages to other people.
– “Flame Mail”: designed to inflame, insight, or
enrage.
– “Hate Mail”: hate-inspired and oppressive--
racist, ethnocentric, sexist, homophobic, anti-
religious, ableist, classist, ageist, etc. (Also
known as “Cyberharassment.”)
• People stealing other peoples’ screen names
and sending inflammatory messages under
those screen names to other people. (Harmon, 2004)

• People creating online “polling booths” to
rate a school’s girls as “hottest,” “ugliest,” or
“most boring.” (Harmon, 2004)
• Individuals taking pictures of others in
locker rooms with digital phone cameras and
sending those pictures to others, or posting
them on Internet websites.

• People creating web sites with stories,
cartoons, caricatures, pictures, or jokes
ridiculing or mocking others.
• Posting material about a person involving
private, sensitive, or embarrassing
information.
– e.g., www.juicycampus.com
• Sending intimidating or threatening
messages (also known as “Cyberstalking”).

CYBERBULLYING & EFFECTS ON YOUNG PEOPLE
• Increased school absenteeism.
• School difficulties.
• Dropping out of school.
• May be perpetrators of school violence (75% of perpetrators
during last decade were victims of bullying).
• Increased risk of alcohol and drug use.
• Psychosomatic symptoms.
• Linked to serious mental health problems:
– Depression
– Anxiety Disorders
– Fear and Withdrawal
– Low Self Esteem
– Substance Abuse
– Suicidal Ideation, Attempts, Completion

Suicide is third leading cause of
death among adolescents, & is
responsible for more deaths than
all illnesses combined.
Karch et al., (2004)

• From Dardenne, Prairie, Missouri
• Committed suicide, Oct. 2006, 13
years old.
• Cyberbullied on MySpace.
• Thought she was communicating
with 16-year-old male named
"Josh Evans.”
• Mother of a friend of Meier,Lori
Janine Drew.
• Drew indicted on three counts of
accessing protected computers to
inflict emotional distress, and one
count of criminal conspiracy.
Megan Meier

• He had a speech and language
learning disability.
• Rumors spread that he was gay.
• Students cyberbullied him
continually in middle school.
• October 7, 2003, he took his life.
• He was 13 years old.
Ryan Patrick Halligan
This site is dedicated to the memory of our son Ryan and for all young people
suffering in silence from the pain of bullying and having thoughts of suicide. We
hope young people become less ashamed to ask for help when feeling suicidal.
We hope adults gain knowledge from our tragedy. As a society, we need to find
better ways to help our young people through their most difficult growing years.
John P. Halligan (RyanPatrickHalligan.org)

What Can Be Done?
www.bullying.org
1. Awareness & Education:
Educate yourself and your
school to the problem.
2. Be aware of sharing personal
information in person or online:
name, address, phone number,
school name, pictures of
yourself, e-mail address. Never
give your password except to
parents or guardians.

3. Don’t believe everything you read
online: Sometimes people will not tell
you the truth about who they are or
what they want.
4. Use Netiquette: Be polite to others
online just as you would offline. Do not
respond if anyone treats you rudely or
hatefully.

5. Never send a message to anyone
when you are angry: Wait until
you have calmed down. Make sure
your messages are calmly and
factually written.
6. Do not open messages from
someone you don’t know: If in
doubt, ask your parents,
guardians, or another adult.
7. If it doesn’t look or “feel right,” it
probably isn’t: Trust your
instincts.

8. Disconnect or Unplug: You don’t have
to be “Always On.” Take a break.
9. Contract with parents/guardians: Ask
them to read the information about
cyberbullying and Internet safety
issues.
10. Allies come to the defense of those who
are bullied. There is no such thing as
an “innocent bystander” in bullying. If
you are aware that bullying is
occurring, intervene on behalf of those
being bullied. This may include telling
a trusted adult. There is a difference
between “tattling” and “reporting.”

11. Parents install “Keystroke Logger” software: to
monitor their child’s computer interactions, for
those who may be engaging in cyberbullying.
12. Information Sessions: Schools can present
information sessions to students and
parents/guardians about cyberbullying.
13. Inservice Training: For teachers, staff,
administrators, and school boards on the topic
of cyberbullying.
14. Curricular Inclusion: In-class curricula
addressing issues of bullying and cyberbullying.

15. Schools need to institute school-wide bullying
prevention programs in conjunction with the
community on an on-going basis.
16. Schools institute students’ “anti-bullying
pledges,” which students can sign.
17. Update computer and Internet school policies:
This update should include harassment and
bullying done with new technologies such as
mobile and wireless Internet information
technologies. Policies should specifically prohibit
cyberbullying and clearly include consequences
for non-compliance.

Suggestions for Targets of
Cyberbullies
1. Speak out: Do not keep it to
yourself or do not isolate yourself.
Tell an adult you know and trust.
2. Inform your Internet, Instant
Messaging, or mobile phone
service providers.
3. Inform your local police.

4. Don’t reply to messages from
cyberbullies!!! They want you to reply to
them to know that they have worried and
upset you. They are trying to control you.
Don’t give them that pleasure.
5. Save all cyberbully’s messages: You
don’t have to read them, but keep them
as evidence and documentation. Police;
Internet service providers; school
teachers, counselors, and administrators;
and telephone companies can use these
messages to help you.

6. Protect yourself: Never arrange to meet
with someone you have met online
unless your parents/guardians go with
you. If you are meeting them, make
sure it is in a public place.
7. You may need to delete and change
your current e-mail accounts, cell
phone/pager accounts, and set up new
ones.

References
• Belsey, B. Cyberbullying.
http://www.cyberbullying.ca/main_frame.html.
• Ericson, N. (2001, June). Addressing the problem of juvenile bullying.
(OJJDP Fact Sheet #27). Washington, DC. U.S. Department of
Justice.
• Harmon, A. (2004, August 26). Internet gives teenage bullies weapons
to wound from afar. America Online. The New York Times Company.
• Iowa Department of Education Sample Policy on Bullying and
Harassment.
• JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, 285(16). April
25, 2001.
• Kapelovitz, L. H. (1987). To love and to work/A demonstration and
discussion of psychotherapy. Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson Inc.

References
• Loeber, R. & Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1986). Family factors as
correlates and predictors of conduct problems and juvenile
delinquency. In M. Tonry and N. Morris (eds.), Crime and Justice,
Vol. 7. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• Media Awareness Network, Challenging cyber bullying,
http://www.bewebaware.ca/english/CyberBullying.aspx.
• Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at school: What we know and what we
can do. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
• Rigby, K. (1996). Bullying in schools—And what to do about it.
Melbourne: ACER.
• Smith, P.K., & Sharp, S. (1994). School bullying: Insights and
perspectives. London: Routledge.
• Suler, J. (2001). Psychology of cyberspace—The online disinhibition
effect. http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html.

References
• Sutton, J., & Smith, P.K. (1999). Bullying as a group process: An
adaptation of the participant role approach. Aggressive Behavior, 25
97-111.
• Tattum, D., & Tattum. E. (1992). Social education and personal
development. London. David Fulton.
• Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the
internet. New York: Simon & Schuster
• Wolak, J., Mitchell, K., Finkelhor, D. (2006). Online victimization of
youth: Five years later. National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children.
•

References
• Ybarra, M., Mitchell, K., Wolak, J., Finkelhor, D. (2006). Examining
characteristics and associated distress related to Internet harassment:
Finding from the Second Youth Internet Safety Survey. Pediatrics,
118(4): E1169-E1177.
• Ybarra, M., Mitchell, K. (2004). Youth engaging in online
harassment: Associations with caregiver-child relationships, Internet
use, and personal characteristics. Journal of Adolescence, 27(3): 319-
336.

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