Disentangling the Frequency and Severity of Bullying and Victimization in the Association with Empathy

Peer victimization and empathy for victims of bullying: A test of bidirectional associations in childhood and adolescence

Anti-bullying interventions often assume that knowing how it feels to be bullied increases empathy for victims. However, longitudinal research on actual experiences of bullying and empathy is lacking. This study investigated whether within-person changes in victimization predicted changes in empathy over 1 year using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. Self- and peer-reported victimization, and cognitive and affective empathy for victims were measured in a sample of 15,713 Finnish youth (M_age  = 13.23, SD_age  = 2.01, 51.6% female; 92.5% had Finnish-speaking parents; data was collected in 2007-2009 when information about participants' race/ethnicity was not available due to ethical guidelines for the protection of personal information). Results indicated small, positive longitudinal associations from victimization to cognitive empathy. Implications for empathy-raising interventions are discussed.

"If it's really excessive, it can enter your heart": A Mixed Methods Investigation of Bullying Among Early Adolescents in Semarang, Indonesia

Bullying is a major public health concern for Indonesian adolescents, with well-documented links to a range of emotional and behavioral problems. Despite such evidence, few investigations have employed qualitative methods to illuminate youth's own perceptions of bullying and its psychosocial correlates in this context. The current study aimed to address this gap through an exploration of Indonesian adolescents' motivations, perceptions, and beliefs regarding bullying. Building on prior quantitative findings, an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach was used to better understand the myriad ways in which bullying ties into other psychosocial challenges. Qualitative interviews were conducted with a total of 45 adolescents ages 13 to 14 (25 girls and 20 boys) in two junior high schools in Semarang between October and December 2019. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and translated into English for analysis. Qualitative data were then coded using an inductive thematic analysis approach. Interviews yielded contextual insights into adolescents' definitions of bullying including the distinction between "normal" and "serious" bullying; related risk behaviors; key drivers; social and emotional consequences; and coping strategies. Across these thematic categories, a number of noteworthy gender differences emerged, highlighting the role that underlying gender norms can play in driving bullying involvement. Further, findings emphasize the need to develop a locally valid definition of bullying which takes into account the ways in which emotional distress may be both a criterion and a consequence of bullying. Findings can be used to inform bullying prevention programs targeting Indonesian youth.

Bullying as a Developmental Precursor to Sexual and Dating Violence Across Adolescence: Decade in Review

Adolescent bullying continues to be a major focus of scholarship across the globe. This article reviews research from 2010 to 2021 with a particular focus on longitudinal studies of the bully-sexual violence pathway (BSVP), where bullying serves as a precursor for sexual violence (SV) (e.g., sexual harassment, sexual coercion, and sexual assault) and teen dating violence via individual and socio-contextual mediators. Articles reviewed consisted of a total of 505, which included 17 meta-analyses and systematic reviews. Databases used for the search were Academic Search Complete, Education Full Text (H. W. Wilson), ERIC, National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts, PsycINFO, PubMed (Medline), and Social Sciences Abstracts (H. W. Wilson). In total, 107 peer-reviewed articles were included in this review. Potential mechanisms underlying the BSVP include social dominance orientation, exposure to sexual education, and alcohol use. Several school-based intervention approaches have evidenced marginal success in reducing rates of bullying and SV by targeting factors undergirding both behaviors. The efficacy of international prevention approaches is summarized. Gaps in the literature are identified and future research is proposed.

Early Adolescent Cognitive and Affective Empathy

Abstract. Cognitive and affective empathy have diverging relations to social–emotional adjustment. However, particularly during adolescence, these associations are not thoroughly understood. Using the Basic Empathy Scale (BES), we examined cognitive and affective empathy (including emotional contagion and emotional disconnection) in association with social–emotional adjustment (negative affect, shyness, social self-efficacy, friendship quality, and peer victimization) in early adolescents ( N = 321). Cognitive empathy and emotional contagion showed divergent links (cognitive empathy was related to positive adjustment, while emotional contagion was related to negative adjustment but also higher friendship quality). Emotional disconnection was negatively associated with social self-efficacy, supporting affective empathy as having multiple factors itself. The findings further validate the BES as a three-factor measure and have implications for understanding social–emotional adjustment in youth.

A model of coercive control in higher education: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

A growing body of research indicates that psychological coercive control poses a threat in academic environments. Little is known, however, about the process, the dynamics, and the phases used to impose silently a variety of non-violent assaults on students and academics. A lack of awareness of coercive intimidation and psychological coercive control obstructs a student's path to academic achievement, which can have an impact on his or her emotional and mental well-being and diminishes the prosperity of society.   Methods: A methodological selection and review of the scientific literature, theories, and practice on psychological intimidation, coercive control, and systems thinking has been employed in this study. A comprehensive reflective analysis and critical synthesis of the relevant scientific literature were conducted to gain insight into the design of a model of psychological coercive control applicable to educational environments.   Results: This article identifies gaps in research theory and practice and examines critical issues of intimidation and psychological coercive control that is relevant to educational contexts. The article proposes a conceptual model of psychological coercive control as a direction for further research.   Conclusions: Adequate awareness, models, and training programmes in relation to coercive infiltration are missing at higher education institutions. There is an urgent need for a curriculum change that may serve to promote support systems thinking and security awareness in educational environments.

A model of coercive control in higher education: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

A growing body of research indicates that psychological coercive control poses a threat in academic environments. Little is known, however, about the process, the dynamics, and the phases used to impose silently a variety of non-violent assaults on students and academics. A lack of awareness of coercive intimidation and psychological coercive control obstructs a student's path to academic achievement, which can have an impact on his or her emotional and mental well-being and diminishes the prosperity of society.   Methods: A methodological selection and review of the scientific literature, theories, and practice on psychological intimidation, coercive control, and systems thinking has been employed in this study. A comprehensive reflective analysis and critical synthesis of the relevant scientific literature were conducted to gain insight into the design of a model of psychological coercive control applicable to educational environments.   Results: This article identifies gaps in research theory and practice and examines critical issues of intimidation and psychological coercive control that is relevant to educational contexts. The article proposes a conceptual model of psychological coercive control as a direction for further research.   Conclusions: Adequate awareness, models, and training programmes in relation to coercive infiltration are missing at higher education institutions. There is an urgent need for a curriculum change that may serve to promote support systems thinking and security awareness in educational environments.

Victims of Bullying: Emotion Recognition and Understanding

Introduction: Victims of bullying often show interpersonal problems, such as having less high-quality interpersonal relationships compared to non-involved individuals. Research suggests that interpersonal struggles are associated with diminished emotional intelligence and competence and can lead to mental health problems such as depression. Therefore, we examined emotion recognition abilities, empathic accuracy, and behavioral responses to emotions in bullying victims and non-involved individuals. Based on previous research, we expected victims to show diminished skills in all three domains. Methods: Adolescents (Mage=17years; 67% female; no "other" gender participants) with (N=24) and without (N=21) a self-reported history of bullying victimization in high school completed a Virtual Reality facial emotion recognition task (ERT-VR), an empathic accuracy task (EAT) using videos of people recounting real-life autobiographical events, and a computer task in which they indicated their likely behavioral responses to facial emotions. Results: The two groups only significantly differed in recognizing emotions when taking their depression symptoms into account. Across emotions, victims had lower recognition accuracy than non-involved individuals. When examining emotion-specific differences, victims showed lower accuracy for neutral faces which they mainly mistook for angry faces. Conclusion: In contrast to expectations, adolescents with a high-school history of bullying victimization mostly showed similar emotional intelligence and competence skills as non-involved individuals. Nonetheless, we found some subtle differences regarding emotion recognition. Victims misjudged neutral as angry faces. This suggests a hostile attribution bias which might help explain victims' interpersonal problems as well as their increased risk for mental health problems.

Bullying and Victimization in Native and Immigrant Very-Low-Income Adolescents in Italy: Disentangling the Roles of Peer Acceptance and Friendship

Background

Very-low-income students are a population at a high risk of perpetrating and suffering bullying at school, and at the same time the peer group at school is often one of the few sources of support for these minors.

Objective

This two-wave study is aimed to disambiguate the two different roles of peer acceptance and friendship on bullying and victimization in very-low-income adolescents, exploring the possible differential role of immigrant background.

Method

An online survey was administered to 249 early to late adolescents living below the poverty threshold (Mage = 12.76; SDage = 2.34; 41.8% girls; 19.3% immigrants). A multivariate regression model with multi-group analyses was applied.

Results

Our results indicated that peer friendship was a protective factor against bullying as well as victimization, whilst peer acceptance was not protective. Only for natives (but not for immigrants), a high level of peer acceptance was a risk factor for bullying, and low school achievement was a risk factor for victimization. The persistence of victimization over time was significantly stronger for immigrants than for natives.

Conclusions

The study provides new insights for the unique protective role of classmates’ friendship in natives and immigrants, while acceptance appeared to be less relevant. Research and applied implications are discussed.

School Violence towards Peers and Teen Dating Violence: The Mediating Role of Personal Distress

School violence towards peers and teen dating violence are two of the most relevant behaviour problems in adolescents. Although the relationship between the two types of violence is well established in the literature, few studies have focused on mediators that could explain this empirical relationship. We departed from the evidence that relates anger, emotional distress and impaired empathy to teen dating violence and juvenile sexual offending, to explore the role of personal distress, i.e., a self-focused, aversive affective reaction to another's emotion associated with the desire to alleviate one's own, but not the other's distress; as a possible mechanism linking school violence towards peers and teen dating violence in a sample of Spanish adolescents. We also explored the prevalence of emotional and physical teen dating violence, both occasional and frequent, and the differences between boys and girls. A total of 1055 adolescents (49.2% boys and 50.8% girls) aged between 11 and 17 years (M = 14.06, SD = 1.34) who had had at least one romantic relationship within the last year, completed measures of school violence towards peers, teen dating violence, and personal distress. Statistical analyses revealed that occasional and frequent teen dating violence (both physical and emotional) was more frequent in girls than in boys, and that personal distress functioned as a partial mediator, with an overall model fit higher for boys than girls: in boys, partial mediation occurred for both physical and emotional teen dating violence; in girls, partial mediation occurred only for physical violence. The interpretation of the results is tentative given the novel nature of the study, and points to the evidence of the emotional costs of school violence and the importance of emotion and behavior regulation to undermine the social costs of personal distress.

School-wide social emotional learning (SEL) and bullying victimization: Moderating role of school climate in elementary, middle, and high schools

Guided by the school-wide social-emotional learning framework and social-ecological model, in this study we examined the associations between students' perceptions of four core social emotional learning (SEL) competencies (i.e., responsible decision-making, social awareness, self-management, and relationship skills) and school climate and their experience with bullying victimization through a multilevel framework. We also examined the multilevel moderating effects of students' perceptions of school climate, gender, and school levels (elementary, middle, and high schools) on the association between SEL competencies and bullying victimization. Participants were 23,532 students (4th to 12th grade) from 90 schools in Delaware. Using hierarchical linear modeling and controlling for demographic factors and school climate at both student and school levels, we found that three of the four core SEL competencies (i.e., social awareness, relationship skills, and self-management) and student-level school climate perceptions had significant associations with students' bullying victimization experiences. Moreover, the positive association between social awareness and bullying victimization and the negative association between self-management and bullying victimization were both mitigated in schools with more positive school climate at the student level. The association between some of the SEL competencies and bullying victimization varied depending on students' gender and grade levels. The findings highlight the unique and differentiated relations among the four core SEL competencies and students' bullying victimization experiences; they also suggest the importance of including school climate assessment and applying gender- and grade-level-specific efforts in bullying prevention programs with an SEL focus.

Perceived burdensomeness, bullying, and suicidal ideation in suicidal military personnel

OBJECTIVE

Suicide is a major public health concern among military servicemembers and previous research has demonstrated an association between bullying and suicide. This study evaluated the association between workplace bullying and suicidal ideation via perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness which were hypothesized to mediate this association.

METHOD

Four hundred and seventy-one suicidal Army Soldiers and U.S. Marines completed self-report measures of suicidal ideation, thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, and bullying. A series of regressions were used to test the hypothesized mediation model using the baseline data from a larger clinical trial.

RESULTS

Perceived burdensomeness was a significant mediator of the association between bullying and the level of suicidal ideation, but thwarted belongingness was not a significant mediator.

CONCLUSIONS

Perceived burdensomeness may represent a malleable target for intervention to prevent suicide among military service members, and should be evaluated further as an intervening variable with regard to suicidality in the setting of bullying victimization.

Empathy and defending behaviours in school bullying: The mediating role of motivation to defend victims

BACKGROUND

The literature indicates that separate significant links exist in adolescence between empathy, cognitive and affective motivation to defend victims, and behavioural problems in bullying episode in schools.

AIMS

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between empathy, motivation to defend, and defending behaviour in bullying situations. The hypothesis focuses on the possible role of autonomous motivation in the association between empathy and defending attitudes.

SAMPLES AND METHODS

Data were collected from 430 Italian adolescents (48.4% male, 51.6% female) who completed a questionnaire in their schools. The mean age of the participants was 13.1 years (SD = 2.1).

RESULTS

Results showed that empathy significantly predicts defending behaviour and also has a significant effect on extrinsic, introjected, and intrinsic motivation to defend. Autonomous motivation, in turn, has a mediating role in the relationship between empathy and defending behaviour.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study suggests the importance of focusing on empathy and on developing autonomous motivation to defend in children, to raise spontaneous defending attitudes against bullying.

The effects of ethnic group membership on bullying at school: when do observers dehumanize bullies?

The purpose of this experiment was to test how ethnic group membership of both the bullies and the victims influence the way that observers attribute human characteristics to bullies. Ethnic group membership was manipulated in terms of bullies' and victims' ethnicity (ingroup-majority group versus outgroup-minority group). Furthermore, we examined the mediating role of empathic concern towards the victim and perspective taking of the bully in the relation between ethnic group membership of bullies and victims and attributions of humanness to the bullies. We hypothesized that observers would attribute lower human characteristics to outgroup bullies when bullies inflict harm on an ingroup victim. Moreover, we expected that perspective taking of the bully and empathic concern towards the victim would mediate this relation. Analysis of data from a sample of 293 Greek-Cypriot adolescents fully corroborated our hypotheses. The findings are discussed in terms of the discrimination-based nature of bullying at school.

Unanimous versus partial rejection: How the number of excluders influences the impact of ostracism in children

Previous research has shown that ostracism-the experience of being ignored and excluded-has negative effects on all of us, young and old. Using a Cyberball paradigm, the present research replicates the effects of ostracism on the moods (anger, anxiety, happiness, and anger) and fundamental needs (belongingness, control, meaningful existence, and self-esteem) of children (Study 1) and then extends the literature by examining the role of the number of ostracizers and inclusive members in this process by randomly assigning children to conditions varying in degree of ostracism (Study 2). Results of both studies showed that experiencing ostracism strongly and negatively affected all moods and fundamental needs-with the exception of anxiety. Study 2 in addition showed that the ratio of excluders to inclusive group members had different effects across outcomes. In all cases, complete ostracism produced the worst outcomes, suggesting that the presence of even a single ally reduces children's distress. For sadness, unanimous ostracism seemed particularly toxic. In some cases, facing two ostracizers produced significantly worse outcomes than only one, suggesting that consensual rejection might drive the negative effects on happiness, and sense of belonging, control, and meaningful existence. For self-esteem, only one ostracizer (in the presence of two inclusive members) was sufficient to induce a negative effect. Aggr. Behav. 43:190-203, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Attribution of human characteristics and bullying involvement in childhood: Distinguishing between targets

This investigation researched the association between the attribution of human characteristics and bullying involvement in children by distinguishing between targets. Study 1 focused on the attribution of human characteristics by bullies, victims, bully/victims, and non-involved children toward friends and non-friends. The data from 405 children (M = 10.7 years old) showed that they attributed fewer prosocial and more antisocial human characteristics to non-friends than to friends. Moreover, boy victims attributed fewer prosocial human characteristics to non-friends than boy bullies and non-involved boys did. In addition, victims attributed more antisocial human characteristics to non-friends than non-involved children did. Study 2 addressed bullies', victims', bully/victims', and non-involved children's attribution of human characteristics to each other. The data of 264 children (M = 10.0 years old) showed that bullies, victims, and bully/victims attributed fewer prosocial and more antisocial human characteristics to each other than to non-involved children. Non-involved children attributed fewer prosocial human characteristics to bully/victims than to bullies and victims, and more antisocial human characteristics to bully/victims than to victims. In addition, girls attributed more prosocial and fewer antisocial human characteristics to girls than to boys, whereas boys did not distinguish between girls and boys. Based on these findings, suggestions for future research are provided and implications for bullying prevention and intervention are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 42:394-403, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.