Relationships of cyberbullying victims' social status, physical attractiveness, and evaluators' sexism with victim blame: The moderating effect of victim gender

Cyberbullying (CB) is defined as aggressive behavior performed on the internet with the intention of causing harm (Novo et al. 2014: 95). In CB incidents, abuse volume and the intention of the content shared by the victim affect victim blame (VB) attitudes of bystanders (Hand et al. 2021: 7; Scott et al. 2020: 5). There are few studies examining the relationships between the victims' as well as the bystanders' characteristics and tendencies and VB attitudes in case of CB. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the victim's social status, physical attractiveness, and participants' sexism on VB attitudes and perceived severity (PS) of the content of responses toward the targets. Secondly, the moderating effects of victim gender on the relationships between participants' hostile sexism and VB attitudes and PS were examined. Finally, the interaction effects of the victims' social status, physical attractiveness, and gender on VB attitudes and PS were explored. Data were collected online using Qualtrics software from 366 participants in Türkiye, and analysis of data was conducted by using IBM SPSS program. The findings revealed that victims with high social status were more blamed than victims with low social status for the exposed CB, and abusive comments directed at victims with high social status were perceived as less severe than abusive comments directed at victims with low social status. Contrary to expectations, physical attractiveness of victims did not have an influence on the participants' VB attitudes and PS. As expected, CB victims were more blamed when they initially posted a negative tweet rather than a neutral or positive tweet, and abusive comments directed at CB victims who have posted a neutral or positive tweet were perceived as more severe rather than abusive comments directed at CB victims who initially posted a negative tweet. As I predicted, high-level abusive comments were perceived as more severe and less deserved responses than neutral comments. Victims' gender did not moderate the relationship between the evaluators' hostile sexism and VB attitudes, and the relationship between the evaluators' hostile sexism and PS of the comments. The victim's social status predicted observer judgments (VB) more strongly than physical attractiveness did. The victim's gender, social status, and physical attractiveness did not have an interaction effect on the evaluators' VB attitudes and PS. The main findings were discussed considering theoretical and practical contributions, limitations, and suggestions for the future research.