The long-term effect of ostracism on cyber aggression: mutually predictive mediators of hostile automatic thoughts and personal relative deprivation

Ostracism is a risk factor for cyber aggression, but the potential mechanism of the relationship between ostracism and cyber aggression remains unclear. On the basis of the general aggression model, we proposed that ostracism may predict cyber aggression through both cognitive routes (e.g., hostile automatic thoughts) and emotional routes (e.g., personal relative deprivation). In order to explore the issue, 809 college students from three universities in China were surveyed three times. The relationship between the variables was tested by constructing full auto-regressive cross-lagged models, and the mediation effects were tested by multiple mediation models. Personal relative deprivation and hostile automatic thoughts can predict each other at three time points. Moreover, personal relative deprivation at time 2 and hostile automatic thoughts at time 2 mediated the longitudinal association between ostracism at time 1 and cyber aggression at time 3, respectively. Furthermore, we found ostracism (T1) predicted cyber aggression (T3) not only through the path from personal relative deprivation (T2) to hostile automatic thoughts (T2) but also through the path from hostile automatic thoughts (T2) to personal relative deprivation (T2). The findings supported the general aggression model and provided a valuable reference for targeted interventions to reduce cyber aggression.