傍観者によるネットいじめの被害者・加害者非難 : 公正世界信念の下位概念の影響に注目して

Previous research has shown that belief in a just world (BJW) is associated with victim blaming at a crime scene. We investigated the effects of two subordinate concepts of BJW—belief in immanent justice (BIJ) and belief in ultimate justice (BUJ)—on victim and perpetrator blaming in cyberbullying in two studies. In both studies, university students responded to a Multidimensional Belief in a Just World Scale (i.e., BIJ and BUJ), and then, one week later, they evaluated a victim and perpetrators in a hypothetical scenario in which a high school student is bullied by his/her classmates online. In both studies, participants who considered the scenario cyberbullying blamed the victim less and blamed the perpetrators more than those who did not believe it was cyberbullying. Of the participants from the second study who considered the scenario cyberbullying, structural equation modeling analysis revealed that BIJ endorsement led to perpetrators blaming, whereas BUJ endorsement led to psychological dissociation from the victim. These results indicate that there can be different relationships between the two types of BJW and just-world maintenance strategies when cyberbullying occurs.