Narcissism and Cyber Trolling: The Roles of Self-Esteem, Digital Empathy, and Online Anonymity

Abstract

The emergence of digital communication platforms has enhanced the possibilities of social interaction as well as the ease of disruptive activities like cyber trolling. This paper investigated the connection between narcissism and cyber trolling behaviour, the mediating effect of self-esteem and empathy, and the moderating effect of perceived online anonymity. The data samples were gathered from online users using a structured questionnaire using validated measures of narcissism, cyber trolling, self-esteem, empathy, and the perceived anonymity of the internet under the quantitative cross-sectional study design. The analysis of data was performed with the aid of descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, Pearson correlation, regression analysis, and Hayes PROCESS macro to test the mediation and moderated mediation modelling. The results indicated that narcissism had a strong positive predictability to cyber trolling behaviour. This relationship was partially mediated by self-esteem and empathy, meaning that the narcissistic traits mediate trolling behaviour both in the self-evaluative and emotional sense. Cyber trolling was negatively related to empathy and positively related to self-esteem, which underscores the protective quality of empathy as compared to self-esteem. The perceived anonymity on the internet was independent of cyber trolling and did not mediate the direct or indirect relationships between narcissism and cyber trolling or these two factors acting through self-esteem and empathy.