A meta-analytic exploration of cyberbullying and its dark associates

Charu Naithani, Sujit Sekhar and Ankur Jha

Behaviour and Information Technology, 2025, vol. 44, issue 20, 5086-5104

Abstract: BackgroundCyberbullying continues to take its toll on social media users, as dark traited individuals (narcissism, psychopathy, machiavellianism) continue to leverage the evolving modes of technology-driven social engagement for the exploitation of others.PurposeIn a similar direction, this study theoretically discusses and meta-analytically examines the strength and nature of the relationship between the Dark Triad and cyberbullying.MethodThe study synthesises the relationship between dark triad and cyberbullying spread across close to two decades, from 2005 to 2023, and tests the moderating effect of age, gender, and cyberbullying scale reliability.ResultIt was observed that all dark traits had a significant positive relationship with cyberbullying, with psychopathy being the strongest predictor, followed by Machiavellianism and narcissism. Further, the estimates of psychopathy and narcissism displayed low to moderate heterogeneity, which was primarily explained by age and gender.ConclusionWe discuss three probable competing explanations for the dark triad – cyberbullying relationship, namely, low empathy, low agreeableness, and low honesty-humility and advance three important research questions geared towards classification of an ever-expanding repertoire of anti-social online behaviours, rationalisation of definitions and measures used to measure cyberbullying, and distinguishing the effect of the dark core and dark traits effects on cyberbullying.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2025.2506660

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