ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1647669
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Interface Between Social Psychology and Educational Psychology: Interactional Phenomena in Educational SettingsView all 8 articles
Classroom Injustice and University Students' Cyberloafing: The Mediating Role of Neutralization Techniques
Provisionally accepted
- Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, China
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The phenomenon of students engaging in cyberloafing in the classroom has been found to have a negative impact on the educational environment. This is not only detrimental to students' acquisition of knowledge but also frustrating for teachers. Based on a neutralization theoretical perspective, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms by which students' perceived classroom justice explains their intention to cyberloaf and the mediating role played by two neutralization techniques, condemning the condemners and appealing to higher loyalties. Neutralization theory posits that individuals are motivated to take action to restore fairness when they perceive injustice, and these actions may include cyberloafing behaviours that reduce personal inputs or costs. A questionnaire was administered to 310 university students from different universities in the central and eastern regions of China. The results indicated that classroom justice was negatively associated with their intention to cyberloaf, and that classroom justice similarly negatively predicted condemnation of condemners and appeal to higher loyalties. Furthermore, condemnation of the condemners and appealing to higher loyalties mediated the relationship between classroom justice and intention to cyberloaf. It is therefore recommended that educators employ a number of strategies to enhance classroom justice in order to reduce students' engagement in cyberloafing behaviours.
Keywords: Classroom Justice, cyberloafing, neutralization, condemnation of condemners, appeal to higher loyalties
Received: 16 Jun 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Han, Yang and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ziwei Huang, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, China
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