Place de l’empathie dans l’émergence de comportements agressifs en milieu scolaire

Abstract

IntroductionThere is a growing interest in aggression in school age children because of both its frequency and its seriousness. It has been suggested that there is a link between empathy and aggressive behavior. The purpose of our study was to investigate the link between aggression in the school environment and cognitive and affective empathy. MethodsThis was a descriptive transversal and retrospective study involving 200 children in grades four to six, at three governmental schools in Manouba. The assessment of empathy was carried out through the “Basic empathy scale children” and the “Griffith Empathy Measure”. The assessment of aggressive behavior was carried out using the “Child Behavior Checklist”. We added two questions assessing the child's position in a fight. ResultsThe mean age was 9.98±at 0.8 years, with a sex ratio of 1.04. Regarding the relationship between aggressive behaviors revealed by the Child Behavior Checklist and empathy, the negative association was significant for emotional empathy and total empathy calculated by the Basic empathy scale children (P=0,007 and 0,03). According to parents, total and cognitive empathy were higher among the defenders, followed by victims, aggressive and then neutral children. These differences were significant (respective P=0.03 and P=0.01). The children who responded to be defenders had the highest average of total empathy and cognitive empathy. Bullies had the lowest averages. The difference was significant for total, cognitive and affective empathy (respective P ≤10-3, 0.004 and ≤10-3). ConclusionOur work shows that a lack of empathy plays an important role in the genesis of aggression. Thus, it would be licit to set up various preventive actions to improve the children's capacity for empathy, and thus to fight against aggression in school age children.