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Social relationships grant access to a variety of resources relevant to survival and reproduction. Such resources include access to mates, resources that influence one's mate value (e.g., social status), and direct or indirect benefits provided by mates themselves. Similar resources exist for non-mating social domains as well (e.g., friendships, kinships, business relationships). However, given constraints on time, energy, and cognitive resources, people can only hold a finite number of individuals in their social networks. Therefore, we must strategically deploy competitive tactics in order to acquire and maintain cooperative social relationships. The strategies and tactics employed in competing for social relationships are explored here through an evolutionary lens. In Chapter 1, I introduce the topic of competition for mating and non-mating relationships from an evolutionary perspective. In Chapter 2, I present two studies demonstrating that people are motivated to share information about a rival when it has greater potential to thwart their rival’s mating attempts. I argue that this pattern of findings is indicative of psychological mechanisms for derogating mating rivals. In Chapter 3, I provide two studies that examine sex differences in reactions to victimization of online aggression, which we predicted from evolved defenses for competitor derogation for mates. In Chapter 4, I apply theories derived from mate competition to study competition for friends and strategies to defend relationships from third-party interlopers (i.e., friend poachers). I develop and validate measures for friend attraction, retention, and poaching. In doing so, I demonstrate that tactics used in competition for friends overlap with those used for mate competition (e.g., competitor derogation) and highlight tactics unique to friendships (e.g., including an interloper in one’s social network).

Cyber-aggression has been of increasing interest to psychological and communication researchers over the past decade. Cyber-aggression is defined as “… any behaviour enacted through the use of information and communication technologies that is intended to harm another person(s) that the target person(s) wants to avoid” (Corcoran, 2015; p. 253). Much research has been carried out on the prevalence, predictors, and consequences of cyber-aggression among children and adolescents (e.g., Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, & Lattanner, 2014; Patchin & Hinduja, 2012). Less is known about experiences of cyber-aggression among college students. College students experience important changes in cognition and social setting compared to adolescents, which may result in different expressions of cyber-aggressive behavior. Though prevalence rates of cyber-aggression among college students are estimated to be lower than the adolescent rate, experiencing cyber-victimization is related to important outcomes among college students, including depressive symptoms (Selkie, Kota, Chan, & Moreno, 2015) and increased negative emotions (Kowalski et al., 2014). Despite these important findings, very little work has been done that examines cyber-victimization in an experimental setting among college students. In this study, I carried out an experiment with 141 college students in which participants were randomly assigned to be exposed to higher levels (experimental group) or lower levels (control group) of cyber-aggression and then assessed in terms aggressive behavior, thoughts, and emotions. I assessed the link between exposure to cyber-aggression and aggressive outcomes and examined moderating effects of three social cognitive variables on this relation. Results demonstrated that there were no significant differences between participants exposed to higher levels of cyber-aggression and participants exposed to lower levels of cyber-aggression on measures of aggressive behavior or cognitions, while there were significant differences between the control and experimental groups on a measure of aggressive affect; participants exposed to higher levels of cyber-aggression reported higher levels of aggressive affect. Normative beliefs about cyber-aggression significantly moderated the relation between exposure to cyber-aggression and aggressive behavior. I discuss the significance of these results, strengths and weaknesses of the current experimental method, and outline how the methods of this study could be put to use in future experimental studies of cyber-aggression.

Cyber aggression is one of the most prevalent issues stemmed from the growing number of internet users. Given the numerous amount of online posts every day, it is not feasible to detect textual cyber aggression manually. This research focuses on analysing social media posts to find elements of cyber aggression and then build an algorithm that uses these elements in a set of rules to detect cyberbullying effectively. Lexicon enhanced rule-based method is used to detect cyber aggression on three different types of social media textual communication: single post from Facebook, question and answer pair from Formspring.me, and thread style from MySpace.com. The algorithm is evaluated using a combination of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 measure. It was found that the algorithm performed best for single style data and the least for thread style data.

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand the experiences of university students, aged 18 to 50, in a suburban Atlanta university who have self-identified as perpetrators of cyberbullying. The three research questions that guided this study sought to determine how students perceive their cyberbullying behavior impacts their peers, how students explain their motivation to cyberbully their peers, and how their experiences led to perpetrating acts of cyberbullying. Experiences were examined that may be contributing factors for cyberbullying. Bandura’s social cognitive theory and the concept of moral disengagement of cyberbullies was examined through the research questions as well. This study utilized 11 participants, identified through purposive sampling, and a qualitative, phenomenological design to understand the experiences of a cyberbully. Participant interviews, focus groups, and participant reflection journals were used to collect data from university students and high school guidance counselors. The data were analyzed utilizing Moustakas ’seven steps to organizing and analyzing the collected data. Trustworthiness was established through member checking, peer review, and persistent observation.

Our dependence on technology for communication has become normalized by today's society. As this dependence continues to heighten, the risk for negative behaviors increases. The new environment for social interaction has allowed different forms of aggression to occur. Cyber aggression is now showing up in another social context - intimate partner violence. It is now possible for couples to argue over the phone or by text, and to use communication technology to express their aggression towards one another. The study was conducted to determine whether cyber aggression victimization co-occurs with in-person experiences of psychological, physical and sexual partner violence. In addition, the study examined if cyber aggression perpetration co-occurs with acts of in-person partner violence. It was hypothesized that victimization and perpetration in one social form (cyber) can likely increase victimization and perpetration in another (in-person) form. Participants were young adult university students in an intimate relationship for at least 6 months. The Revised Conflicts Tactics Scale and the Cyber Aggression in Relationships Scale were used to gather data through an online survey. Hypothesis testing involved the use of correlational analysis. The results indicated that there was higher incidence rates of in-person aggression than cyber aggression in young adults. Lastly, there was a significant correlation between cyber and in-person IPA.

Cyber aggression came about as a result of advances in information communication technology and the aggressive usage of the technology in real life. Cyber aggression can take on many forms and facets. However, the main focus of this study is cyberbullying and cyberstalking through information sharing practices that might constitute digital aggressive acts. Human aggression has been extensively investigated. Studies focusing on understanding the causes and effects that can lead to physical and digital aggression have shown the prevalence of cyber aggression in different settings. Moreover, these studies have shown strong relationship between cyber aggression and the physiological and physical trauma on both perpetrators and their victims. Nevertheless, the literature shows a lack of studies that could measure the level of acceptance and tolerance of these dangerous digital acts. This study is divided into two main stages; Stage one is a qualitative pilot study carried out to explore the concept of cyber aggression and its existence in Saudi Arabia. In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 Saudi social media users to collect understanding and meanings of cyber aggression. The researcher followed the Colaizzi’s methods to analyze the descriptive data. A proposed model was generated to describe cyber aggression in social media applications. The results showed that there is a level of acceptance to some cyber aggression acts due to a number of factors. The second stage of the study is focused on developing scales with reliable items that could determine acceptability and tolerability of cyber aggression. In this second stage, the researcher used the factors discovered during the first stage as source to create the scales’ items. The proposed methods and scales were analyzed and tested to increase reliability as indicated by the Cronbach’s Alpha value. The scales were designed to measure how acceptable and tolerable is cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking in Saudi Arabia and the sharing of some information in social media applications. The results show a strong tolerance level of those activities. This study is a valuable resource for advanced-level students, educators, and researchers who focus on cyber security, cyber psychology, and cyber aggression in social network sites.

Intimate partner violence is prevalent in contemporary society and certain groups of individuals such as college students are particularly at high risk for becoming involved in aggressive relationships. Despite the detailed body of literature that examines the risk factors for in-person partner violence, researchers have been criticized for their lack of attention to other behaviors that may be considered abusive. One new area of research is cyber aggression, which refers to the use of newer forms of technology (e.g., cell phones and computers) to facilitate repeated harassing behavior with the intention of harming others. Few scholars, however, examine these behaviors among young adult samples or note the relationship between the perpetrator and victim. Because of the dearth of literature on cyber aggression among current and former intimate partners, a mixed methods research design was used to explore this topic using the routine activities theoretical perspective among male and female undergraduate students at a mid-sized Midwestern university. The purpose of this study was to use focus group data to explore participant views on cyber aggression among college intimates in order to develop a survey instrument. Additionally, quantitative analyses were used to examine the correlates of partner cyber aggression. The theoretical and policy implications of the qualitative and quantitative findings were discussed.