Personality Factors Predicting Cyberbullying and Online Harassment

Today more than half of the world population use the internet and online communication tools. These changes in communication has come with a pay-off, which is cyber aggression. Bullying behavior in physical space has changed its medium. Personality is one of the factors that play a role in traditional bullying and it is related to cyberbullying. Different personality theories examine personality and online harassment behavior relations from different perspectives. Biological theories focus on brain anomalies and hormone-behavior interaction. Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes how cyberspace effect personality. Trait view of personality theories found that different traits which are psychopathy, narcissism, machiavellianism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, consciousness, neuroticism are related to cyberbullying perpetration. In this study, how personality traits related to online bullying behavior is examined. Researchers clearly showed that personality is a crucial factor in cyberbullying behavior. As cyberbullying behavior is complex, there is a need for further studies.