Can Positive Emotion Induction

Reduce Negative Reactions among

Adolescents Cyberbullying Victims?

YeoJu Chung, Associate Professor, Korea National University of

Education
Kyunghee Du, JaMyoung Yi, & A-ra Lee
 Contents

Introduction

Literature Review

Research Hypothesis

Method & Procedure

Results
Discussion & Conclusion
Introduction & Literature Review
 Purpose

Cyberbullying is increasing and one of counseling issues

Victims of cyber bullying

depressive, anxious, sensitive, cautious, and react to
aggression, feelings of being ostracized and of loneliness,
or sometimes suicide

the importance of positive affect has been stressed in

counseling area

Functions of enhancing positive affects have been focused

also by some emotion researchers (e.g. Fredrickson, 1998;
Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998).

how to solve cyberbullying problem

inducing positive affects will reduce negative psychological
effects from cyberbullying
Literature Review - Bullying

What is Bullying? (Olweus, 1993, 1999a)

Aggressive behavior or intentional
harmdoing
Repeated and over time action
An imbalance of power in an
interpersonal relationship
Someone intentionally inflicts, or
attempts to inflict, and show aggressive
behaviors
Verbal vs. Nonverbal
Verbal actions: threatening, taunting, teasing,
and calling names
Nonverbal actions: hitting, pushing, kicking,
pinching, and restraining
Literature Review Cyber
Bullying
What is Cyber Bullying?
Bullying that involves the use of e-mail,
instant messaging, text digital imaging
messages and digital images sent via
cellular phones, Web pages, Web
logs(blogs), chat rooms or discussion
groups, and other information
communication technologies (Health
Resources and Services Administration,
2006; Patchin & Hinduja, 2006; Shariff &
Gouin, 2005; Willard, 2006)
Literature Review Cyber
Bullying
What is Cyber Bullying?
Nancy Willard, 2006
Kowalski, Limber, and Agatston, 2008
Literature Review Cyber
Bullying
Cyber Bullying Passes Current
National Childrens Home (NCH, 2002) Study: 7% via Internet
chat rooms, and 4% through e-mail
Keith and Martin (2004): 57% of students said that someone
had said hurtful or angry things to them online
Ybarra and Mitchell (2004a): 19% of young regular Internet
users aged 10-17 were involved in online harassment
British study (Smith, Mahdavi, Carvalho, & Tippett, 2006):
22% of the students aged 11-16 reported that they had been
bullied in the cyber space at least once in the two months
Williams and Guerra (2006): 21% of the students had ever
been cyber bullied
Afrabs (2006) study: 53% of the respondents said that they
had been bullied online
Chung and Kim (2013): 42.9% of total students(n=1112)
have experienced cyberbullying before
Literature Review Cyber
Bullying
Cyber bullying - More Harmful
Literature Review Cyber
Bullying
Literature Review
Focus on affect problems
of victims in bullying

Affect problems of victims

self-evaluation and emotional coping
skills (Andreou, 2001)
lack of emotional ability to prevent and
resolve conflicts (Mahady-Wilton, 1997)
symptoms and suicidal thoughts (Roland,
2002)
depressed and stressful due to negative
self-concept (Marsh, Parada, Craven and
Finger, 2004)
 Chung and Kim (2013)

at kind of feeling did you have when you are bullied in the cyber spa

70 64

60
50.7
50

40 32.1
27.5
30
17.2
20 15.7 14.5 15.9 12.2 13.3
7.2 7.2
10 3.1 1.7
0
0
 Chung and Kim (2013)

Reactions after being cyberbullied

only cyberbullied middle school students

70 65

60
45.9
50
38.7
40 31.7
28.4 29.9
30

20
7.3
10 2.1 3.9
0.9
0
Literature Review
Functions of Positive Affect
compared to Negative Affect
Literature Review
Functions of Positive Affect
compared to Negative Affect
Literature Review
Functions of Positive Affect
compared to Negative Affect
Literature Review
Functions of Positive Affect
compared to Negative Affect
 Literature Review
How to enhance positive affect
mood induction

the effect size

Film/Story + instructions - the most significant
combined (e.g. Velten + music, or Velten + feedback) - very significant
(Westermann and his collegues meta analysis,1996)
Research Hypothesis
 Research Hypothesis
Experiment 1. Cyberbullying manipulation will make people
have negative feelings and biases.
Participants in the cyberbullying manipulation condition will get larger
points in negative moods and get fewer points in positive moods of self
report adjective selection than participants in control group.
Participants in the cyberbullying manipulation condition will show
higher negative biases when they interpret facial expression than
participants in control group.
Experiment 2. Positive affect enhancement will make
people have positive feelings, not biased, and memorize
more positive factors.
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will get larger
points in positive moods and get fewer points in negative moods of self
report adjective selection than participants in control group.
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will show
lower negative biases when they interpret facial expression than
participants in control group
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will memorize
more positive meaning words than participants in control group.
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will memorize
 Research Hypothesis
Experiment 3. Positive affect enhancement will weaken
negative feelings, biases in interpretation and memory,
and negative movements from cyberbullying?
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will get larger
points in positive moods and get fewer points in negative moods of self
report adjective selection than participants in control group even after
they are cyberbullied.
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will show
lower negative biases when they interpret facial expression than
participants in control group even after they are cyberbullied.
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will memorize
more positive meaning words than participants in control group even
after they are cyberbullied.
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will memorize
more words than participants in control group even after they are
cyberbullied.
Participants in the positive affect enhancement condition will show
lower negative face and hands movement.
Method & Procedure
Research Method -
Participants Experiment Control
Total
group group
Experiment 1

Participants Sex

Males 9 8 17
Females 8 7 15

Cyberbullied experience

Yes 4 3 7
No 13 12 25
Total 17 15 32
Experiment 2

Sex

Males 10 10 20
Females 7 7 14
Total 17 17 34
Experiment 3

Sex

Males 17 18 35
Females 15 14 29

Cyberbullying experience

Yes 5 7 12
No 27 25 52
Research Method - Measures
Research Method - Measures

Mood Induction (Velten + feedback)

The Velten Mood Induction Procedure (Velten, 1967,

1968)
Used extensively by researchers to induce elated and
depressed moods in the laboratory.
The task consists of subjects being asked to read and
"try to feel the mood suggested" by 60 self-referent
elated or depressed statements, or 60 neutral
statements.

Selected both 30 positive sentences and 30 neutral

sentences
Tested effect of these sentences in experiment 2
Used 30 sentences right after feedback in
experiment 3
Research Method - Measures

Self report - emotions

Instrument for Measuring Emotions

(Kang, Hahn, & Chon, 2000)

developed by Kang et al. (2000)

based on self-discrepancy theory
consisting of 20 items rated on 7-point scale
dejection-related emotion (depression), agitation-related
emotion (anxiety), and positive feeling
GFI of the 3 subscales is .995


1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

4
depression
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
anxiety
10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

11 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

12 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

13 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

14 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

15 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

16 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Positive feeling
17 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

18 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

19 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

20 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Research Method - Measures

Interpret facial expressions

Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of

Emotion (JACFEE) and Neutral Faces (JACNeuF)
(Matsumoto, & Ekman, 1988) (appendix G)

developed by Matsumoto and Ekman (1988)

anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and
surprise
evidence for cross-cultural differences in levels of
recognition (Matsumoto, 1992)
selecting the intended emotion term were conducted and
resulted in significant findings at the 70% , 75%, and 80%
agreement levels
Contempt
Neutral
Research Method - Measures

Emotional words memory

Emotional words memory test

(Vasa, Carlino, London, & Min, 2006)

developed by Vasa et al. (2006)

threat, positive, and neutral. Childrens valence ratings
Cronbachs alpha coefficients .91, .89, and .92 for threat,
positive, and neutral words, respectively
Selected 10 positive words, 10 negative words, and 10
neutral words randomly arranged
recall positive and negative emotional words, and non-
emotional words by Nagae, & Moscovitch (2002)


Research Method - Measures

Video Taping

Recorded students face and hands movement with

camcoder
3 experts made coding
Coding sheet followed concepts of the new Facial Action
Coding System (FACS) by Paul Ekman, Wallace V. Friesen,
and Joseph C. Hager (2002)
positive movement and negative movement.
eyes (eg. a smile with eyes vs. a sneer with eyes), lips (eg.
a smile with lips vs. a sneer with lips), head (eg. nodding
vs. moving slantwise), and hands (eg. agreeing with hands
vs. hiding a mouth or a face with hands)
Research Procedure
Research Procedure -
experiment 3
Results
EXPERIMENT 3 RESULT
 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction

FIGURE 16
Experiment 3_Feeling adjective selection
30.0 27.2
25.5
25.0 23.1

20.0
15.817.1
15.0 13.1 12.412.7
10.1
10.0 7.5 8.7 8.1
5.9 7.0 6.9
5.0 5.2
5.0 3.7

0.0

depressio anxiety positive feeling

n
experiment group control group
 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction
Using Wilks lambda, multivariate significance for the group classification main
effect was established, F(6,57)= 11.320, p<.001

TABLE 15
Experiment 3_Repeated measures MANOVA of feeling adjective selection

Mean Square df F

depression 501.735 2 9.659***

anxiety 338.094 2 5.367**

positive
3125.906 2 33.712***
feeling

***p<.001, **p<.01, *p<.05

 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction

FIGURE 17
Experiment 3_ Photo facial expression assumption
3.50
2.88
3.00 2.69 2.84 2.63
2.50 2.25 2.13
1.97
2.00 1.78
1.50 1.19
1.00 0.91
1.00 0.81
0.50
0.00
pre cyberbulling mood induction pre cyberbulling mood induction

positive negative
experiment group control group
 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction

FIGURE 18
Experiment 3_ Negative assumption frequency

no. of participants

12

10 10
9
8 8
7 7
experiment
6 6
control
5
4 4
3
2
1 1
0 no. of negative
0 1 2 3 4 5 assumptions
 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction

FIGURE 19 TABLE 19
Emotional words memory test MANOVA
8.00
7.22 Wilks Lambda was .836 [F(3,60) =
7.00
6.38 3.922, p<.05]
6.00

5.00
Mean
4.00
3.44 df F
Square
3.00
2.31 2.38
1.91 no. of positive
2.00 20.250 1 9.049**
words
1.00 no. of
negative 3.516 1 2.364
0.00
words
no. of total
11.391 1 2.108
words
experiment group control group
**p<.01, *p<.05
 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction

FIGURE 20 TABLE 20
% of memorized words MANOVA
60.00
Wilks Lambda was .901 [F(2,61) =
50.00 47.94 3.361, p<.05]

40.00 36.36 36.41 Mean

df F
Square
30.00 27.16
% of positive
20.250 1 9.049*
words
20.00
% of negative
3.516 1 2.364*
10.00
words

*p<.05
0.00
pos_% neg_%

experiment group control group

 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction

FIGURE 21
Experiment 3_ facial and hands expression
3.50
3.03
3.00
2.50 2.28 2.38
1.97
2.00 1.69 1.78 1.63
1.50
1.00 0.66
0.50 0.38
0.50 0.22
0.06
0.00
pre cyberbulling mood induction pre cyberbulling mood induction

positive negative
experiment group control group
 Research Results
Experiment 3 Cyberbullying, Mood induction

Using Wilks lambda, multivariate significance for the group classification main
effect was established, F(4,59)= 6.236, p<.001

TABLE 22
Experiment 3_Repeated measures ANOVA of facial and hands expression

Mean Square df F

positive expressions 33.167 2 9.515***

negative expressions 7.292 2 2.298

***p<.001
 Discussion
The negative effects of cyberbullying were revealed
from experiment 1 and 3
self report feeling adjectives selection, emotional words
memory and recording faces and hands movement
cyberbullying make students socially anxious, loneliness,
frustration, sadness, and helplessness (Geller, Goodstein,
Silver, & Sternberg, 1974; Kowalski, Limber, & Agaston, 2008;
Leary, 1990; Rigby, 2008; Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000)
facial expression photo interpretation - numbers of negatively
biased interpretation of both groups were not significantly
different.
 Discussion
The positive effects of positive mood induction were
revealed from experiment 2 and 3
self report feeling adjectives selection, emotional words
memory and recording faces and hands movement
positive affect generation makes students recover quickly from
their stressful events (e.g. Fredrickson, 1998; Fredrickson,
Mancuso, Branigan, & Tugade, 2000; Kirschenbaum, Tomarken,
and Humphery, 1985)
facial expression photo interpretation - numbers of negatively
biased interpretation of both groups were not significantly
different.
frequency data shows a little difference
 Limitation & Further
Research
tested only middle school students, and conducted the
experiment in 30 minutes.
other students (e.g. elementary school students) for general conclusion
experiment time was a little short
Facial photo - not only frequency test but also intensity test (for a
review, see Matsumoto, & Ekman, 1988, 1989).
need to think about how to induce positive affect in
counseling situation.
cognitively self-referent statement and feedback methods
more sophisticated methods for our clients
real cyberbullying situation should be conducted.
driven by experimental situation
in real situation, there might be more extra variables which I cannot
control
we need to test the effect of positive affect to really cyberbullied
students.
Thank You !