Abstract
This study analyses the relationship between empathy and school bullying, taking both perpetrators and victims into consideration. The study sample comprised 840 students, 423 of which were female (50.36%), aged an average of 14.28 years. The instruments used were an ad hoc questionnaire for socioeconomic variables and bullying behaviour, an empathy questionnaire, and a personality questionnaire. Victims yielded higher scores in terms of empathic concern, while both groups, aggressors and victims, yielded similar results in terms of cognitive and affective empathy. Concerning the correlation between these variables and personality, anxiety was found to be correlated with affective empathy and empathetic concern in both groups. A correlation between cognitive empathy and impulsiveness and activity was also found in both groups. Remarkably, aggression and cognitive empathy were found to be correlated, but only among victims. Finally, experiences with classmates, anxiety, sincerity, and aggression were found to act as predictors of school bullying, while gender and aggression factors were found to act as predictors among perpetrators, but to a lesser extent, which suggests that other factors must be in place for bullying behaviour to occur. The results suggest that, although empathy levels are different in both groups, they cannot act as a predictor of bullying, especially concerning perpetrators.
Highlights
This study analyses the relationship between empathy and school bullying, taking both perpetrators and victims into consideration
Concerning empathy in victims and aggressors, the study found no significant differences in terms of affective empathy and cognitive empathy
Previous studies reported that victims of bullying were more prone to show higher levels of empathic and cognitive empathy [4,47,48], but less attention had hitherto been paid to empathic concern
Summary
This study analyses the relationship between empathy and school bullying, taking both perpetrators and victims into consideration. Concerning the correlation between these variables and personality, anxiety was found to be correlated with affective empathy and empathetic concern in both groups. The results suggest that, empathy levels are different in both groups, they cannot act as a predictor of bullying, especially concerning perpetrators. Empathy is the ability to understand other people’s minds, to feel emotions other than our own, and to respond to them with concern and care for other people’s suffering. It has commonly been defined as the ability to understand another person’s feelings [1,2]. Empathy is considered a multi-dimensional concept, with both affective and cognitive dimensions [8]
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