Examination of Narcissistic Personality Traits' Predicting Level of Internet Addiction and Cyber Bullying through Path Analysis.

AbstractThe main aim of this study is to find out to what extend do narcissistic personality traits predict internet addiction and cyber bullying in vocational high school students. For this study five hundred and eight vocational high school students (331 male students- 66,2%, 169 female students 33,8% and 8 unstated x 16,24) from Anatolian side of Istanbul Province have been selected by using cluster sampling method. As data collection tools, Narcissistic Personality Inventory adopted by Atay, Internet Addiction Scale developed by Gunuc and Kayri, and Cyber Bullying Inventory developed by Aricak et.al have been used. The model shows that narcissism has an indirect effect on cyber bullying. As a trait of narcissistic personality "entitlement", significantly predicts "deprivation" and controlling difficulty in internet addiction, besides, the trait of narcissistic personality, "superiority" predicts significantly "social isolation" in internet addiction. It is found out that the scores of narcissistic personality "exploitativeness" negatively predict the scores of internet addiction "controlling difficulty". Key WordsPersonality, Narcissism, Narcissistic Personality, Internet Addiction, Cyber Bullying, Path Analysis.21st century is different from other centuries with its many features. Today, in other words in 'information age', computers and Internet has stepped in every part of our lives. The information technologies which were originally designed to ease our lives, later has caused some disadvantages and problems. Internet addiction and cyber bullying are only two of these problems. Besides these problems are mentioned in the media frequently, the number of people consulting psychiatrist because of internet addiction and cyberbullying is increasing and the problem is discussed at schools increasingly at psychological counseling and guidance services. Recently, by extending the traditional bullying concept, the opportunities brought by the technology and youngsters' using technology widespread emerged the cyber bullying concept which enables people to bully via technology (Ayas and Horzum, 2011). Bullying, in many societies, has a very crucial effect on adolescents. There are many studies concerning bullying in the literature. (Conolly and O'Moore, 2003; Calik, Ozbay, Ozer, Kurt and Kandemir, 2009; Dake, Price, Telljohann and Funk 2003; Piskin, 2002). Traditional bullying consist of physical behaviors (hitting, pushing. etc.) and verbal exploitation (mocking and nicknaming) and further exclusion from the society and gossiping about someone (Kowalski and Limber, 2007). There is a meaningful relationship between bullying and cyberbullying (Li, 2007b). Shariff(2005) states that cyberbullying is an extension of bullying. Bullies, cyber bullies and their victims are in close friendship and almost 30% of bullies are cyber bullies (Li, 2007b). Although there are some similarities between traditional bullying and cyber bullying, (Hinduja and Patchin, 2008; Li, 2006, 2007a), there are important differences between cyber bullying and traditional bullying (Kowalski and Limber, 2007; Mason, 2008). For instance, traditional bullies are known by others at school or at work. Yet, usually it is not known who the virtual bullies are (Anderson and Sturm, 2007; Chibbaro, 2007; Strom and Strom, 2005). This causes virtual bullying harm much (Beale and Hall, 2007). Valkenburg and Soeters (2011) list the negative sides of information and communication technologies for adolescents as the possibility of encountering the pornographic images and violent materials, sharing the personal information with people met via information and communication technologies, and meeting that people face to face. Scaglione and Scaglione (2006) state that among these negative sides, the transfer of traditional bullying to cyber world takes the first place and this is called cyber bullying. Cyber bullying has emerged from bullying and harassment in recent years. …