Impact of Spirituality/Religiousness on Cyber Bullying and Victimization in University Students: Mediating Effect of Emotional Intelligence.

The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between spirituality/religiousness with cyber bullying and victimization amongst Indian University students and whether emotional intelligence mediates the relationship. Data were collected from 490 University students studying in undergraduate and postgraduate courses across India. IBM AMOS was used to find reliability and validity of instruments and PROCESS macro for IBM SPSS by Preacher and Hayes (Behav Res Methods 36(4): 717-731, 2004) was used for conducting mediation analyses. Both spiritual and existential well-being were found negatively related with cyber bullying and victimization. As far as mediation goes, the negative relationships between spiritual and existential well-being with that of cyber bullying and victimization were significantly mediated by Appraisal of Self-Emotions, Appraisal of Other's Emotions and Regulation and control of Emotions dimensions of emotional intelligence. Implication and future directions are also discussed.