Bullying, empathy, and school policy
Trach, Garandeau & Malamut (2023) published “Peer Victimization and Empathy for Victims of Bullying: A test of bidirectional associations in childhood and adolescence” in Child Development. I’ve previously cited work by Trach but was drawn to this work because of its premise. Here’s the edited abstract and article:
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. Results indicated small, positive longitudinal associations from victimization to cognitive empathy. Implications for empathy-raising interventions are discussed.
Empathy—the ability to be aware of, understand, and share another person's emotional experience is generally viewed as a desirable life skill because it enables us to take on the perspective of others so that we may engage in healthier and more satisfying interpersonal relationships. Indeed, a robust, positive association has been observed between the ability to empathize with the suffering of another and a desire to help the person in distress. Empathy also plays an important role in school bullying, as it is negatively associated with bullying perpetration concurrently and over time, and positively predicts defending of victimized peers. Due to these established associations between empathy and youth's behavior in bullying situations, empathy-raising activities are a common component in most anti-bullying programs. Such activities generally consist of exercises that help students put themselves “in the shoes” of victims. A critical assumption underlying these types of interventions is that knowing what it feels like to be victimized contributes to feeling greater empathy for other victims of bullying. Most studies of peer victimization have focused on negative outcomes (e.g., internalizing problems, academic difficulties, etc. Is it possible that peer victimization also contributes to greater understanding and appreciation of others' suffering—that is, greater empathy?
There are theoretical reasons for expecting an association between peer victimization and empathy. First, post-traumatic growth theory (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004) argues that, in addition to the adverse outcomes typically associated with extremely stressful experiences like being bullied, there is growing evidence that some individuals can also experience post-traumatic growth in the form of positive individual development following traumatic life events. In a recent study, approximately 25% of young adults who were bullied in adolescence described experiencing some positive outcomes in adulthood, such as prioritizing healthy relationships, becoming more assertive, and being able to recognize and stand up to bullying. Whether being bullied in adolescence is associated with other positive traits, like increased empathy, remains unclear.
Second, greater empathy for victims of bullying may be aroused more easily in those who have shared the same experience. According to the motivational theory of empathy (Zaki, 2014), individuals are motivated to either approach or avoid situations which may elicit empathy, and regulate their behavior accordingly. As bullying is a group phenomenon that involves many different participant roles, it can be expected that youth who tend to share the same participant role across bullying situations (e.g., victims) should be more likely to empathize with other members of that group, compared to those who have a different bullying role. According to the “risky strength theory” (Tone & Tully, 2014), individuals that are higher in empathic sensitivity may be at increased risk for experiencing internalizing problems, which may contribute to greater stress and more relationship problems, including peer victimization. Consequently, by being more willing to engage with the suffering of others (rather than avoid it), it is also theoretically plausible that children who are more empathic towards victims of bullying may be at increased risk for becoming victimized themselves.
The literature typically distinguishes two types of empathy: (1) cognitive empathy, which involves correctly identifying and understanding the emotions of others (also known as perspective taking) and (2) affective empathy, or the experience of increased emotional arousal in response to another person's suffering, usually the same or similar emotions that one imagines the other person to feel. Empathic concern (also referred to as sympathy or compassion) is a specific form of affective arousal that involves feeling concern for the well-being of others combined with a desire to relieve their suffering, and has often been used interchangeably with affective empathy in the scientific literature.
In addition to the theories described above, it seems reasonable to propose that children who have first-hand knowledge of how it feels to be bullied should have a greater understanding of how painful it is, which should increase their empathy for those who are subjected to the same adverse experience.
It also seems plausible that children's negative peer experiences could interfere with their ability to feel empathy toward others.
It is also important to consider the possibility that the association between empathy and peer victimization could be bidirectional. That is, the tendency to empathize with others could predict future victimization. Empathy has been described as a “risky strength” that can make individuals more vulnerable to personal distress, excessive guilt, and increased internalizing problems, the latter of which has been a well-documented risk factor for peer victimization.
Lastly, it is also conceivable that empathy which has been positively associated with other important social and emotional skills may actually help to prevent children from victimization.
The sample for this study was drawn from the randomized control trial of the KiVa anti-bullying program (average participation rate of 90% at T1). The data used in the current study included 17, 209 students in grades 3–8 at T1 (Mage = 13.34, SDage = 1.86; 51.1% female; 40.6% primary school; 92.5% born to Finnish-speaking parents; data collection occurred in Finland from 78 primary and 78 secondary schools that were randomly assigned to either the intervention or control condition.
Participants' self-reported peer victimization experiences were assessed at each time point using a single global item from the revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus, 1996): “How often have you been bullied at school in the last couple of months?” Answers were given on a 5-point scale: 0 = not at all, 1 = once or twice, 2 = two or three times a month, 3 = once a week, 4 = several times a week.
Participants' reputation for being victimized by peers was measured using three peer-nomination items from the Participant Role Questionnaire (PRQ; Salmivalli & Voeten, 2004; e.g., “s/he is called names and made fun of”). Students were presented with a list of their classmates (including male-identifying and female-identifying peers) and could nominate an unlimited number of classmates for each item.
Bullying perpetration was assessed using three peer-nomination items from the PRQ (e.g., “starts bullying”). Students were presented with a list of their classmates (including male-identifying and female-identifying peers) and could nominate an unlimited number of classmates for each item. The received, unlimited nominations for each item were summed and divided by the number of possible nominators within each class. Bullying perpetration scores were created by averaging the proportion scores across the three items for each student, with scores ranging from 0 to 1.
Two types of empathy were measured using the seven-item empathy toward victims scale (Kärnä et al., 2013). Three items measured cognitive empathy for the victim (e.g., “I can understand how the bullied pupil must feel,” Cronbach's α = .86–.91), and four items measured affective empathy for the victim (e.g., “when the bullied pupil is sad, I also feel sad”, Cronbach's α = .88–.92). Answers were given on a 4-point scale (0 = never, 3 = always). Items within each subscale were averaged at each wave of data collection to create a mean score for cognitive and affective empathy for each participant at each time point.
As interventions designed to raise empathy for victims of bullying generally rely on the assumption that knowing what it feels like to be victimized will lead to increases in empathy, this study sought to test whether there is a prospective link between youth's firsthand experiences with peer victimization and their level of empathy for other victims of bullying. With data from a large sample of primary and secondary school students, a RI-CLPM was used to disentangle within-person from between-person effects. Small, but significant positive associations were found between youths' experiences with peer victimization and their empathy for other victims of bullying; however, results varied depending on the type of empathy (cognitive vs. affective), and whether victimization was measured using self- or peer-report.
Youth who had been victimized more in the past year (as measured by either self-reported frequency of victimization, or strength of peer-reported reputation for being bullied) tended to report experiencing more cognitive and affective empathy for victims compared to youth who were less victimized, or not victimized at all.
When youth reported higher levels of victimization compared to their own average, they also reported more cognitive and affective empathy for victims. In contrast, youth's reputation for being bullied was only positively correlated with cognitive empathy for victims, indicating that youth who were more likely to be seen as victims by their peers also reported being able to better understand the experiences of others who were going through the same experience. This difference may help to explain some of the inconsistent effects found in the previous literature, and further underscores the importance of considering the perspective of different informants of victimization within the same study. In addition, small, but generally consistent cross-lagged associations between the two forms of empathy was observed across time, such that youth who deviated from their average level of affective empathy for victims at one time point were more likely to change in the same direction in cognitive empathy for victims several months later. This suggests that affective arousal may be important for motivating youth to take the perspective of a victim, regardless of shared experiences. This is also consistent with previous developmental research showing that the ability to share another's emotions tends to develop earlier in life, and is distinct from the ability to understand another's emotional or mental state.
A small longitudinal effect of peer victimization on empathy was found, but only for cognitive empathy for victims of bullying. Specifically, relative to their own average scores, youth who reported that they had been bullied with greater frequency at the end of one school year were more likely to report higher cognitive empathy for victims during the beginning of the next school year. Similarly, having a stronger reputation for being bullied also positively predicted youth's reports that they understood the experiences of other victims the following year (i.e., cognitive empathy), but did not influence their tendency to feel upset in response to another's victimization (i.e., affective empathy). These associations held for both genders, across primary and secondary school levels, and regardless of whether youth were involved in bullying others, or were participating in an anti-bullying intervention that has been shown to positively influence affective empathy. No support was found for the hypothesis that victimized youth would demonstrate less empathy for their victimized peers as a consequence of their previous negative peer experiences.
The current results do not indicate that youth who are more empathic toward victims are at greater risk for being bullied themselves. Empathy for victims also does not appear to be an asset that protects youth from future victimization.
I like this work because it has a huge longitudinal sample and differentiates cognitive and affective empathy, finding that cognitive empathy is the more powerful predictor of understanding what it’s like to be a victim. The second study moves from self and peer perspectives to teacher perspectives. Yang, Dong, Rho & Teng (2023) published “Associations Between School-Wide Practices and School-Wide Bullying: Advancing the cross-country understanding of teachers’ perspectives from the U.S. and China” in School Psychology. Here’s the edited abstract and impact statement:
To understand the role of different school-wide practices in school-wide bullying prevention in the global context, this present study was guided by the social–ecological framework to examine cross-country similarities and differences in the association between three forms of school-wide practices (i.e., punitive, positive, and social and emotional learning [SEL] practices) and school-wide bullying between United States (n = 1,833) and Chinese (n = 1,627) teachers from middle and high schools. [An example of a positive program is positive behavioral support]. Measurement invariance tests confirmed that the associations between the three forms of school-wide practices and school-wide bullying were comparable across the two countries. Results of multilevel analyses suggested that more frequent positive practices at the between-school level were associated with increased school-wide bullying in the United States but decreased school-wide bullying in the Chinese. Also, more frequent punitive practices at the within-school level were associated with increased school-wide bullying in both the U.S. and Chinese samples, and this positive association between punitive practices and school-wide bullying was significantly stronger in the Chinese sample than in the U.S. sample. More frequent punitive practices at the between-school level were also associated with increased school-wide bullying in the U.S. sample, but not in the Chinese sample. Moreover, the frequent SEL practices at the within-school level were significantly associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the United States, but not in China; the frequent SEL practices at the between-school level were associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the United States but increased school-wide bullying in China. Implications for school-wide practices in bullying prevention and intervention with sociocultural considerations were discussed.
The results from this study provide important implications for developing culturally responsive school-wide prevention and intervention practices to address bullying and promote safe and nurturing school environments for students, particularly from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in transnational contexts.
This study makes it clear that school practices regarding bullying are complicated. It makes sense that punitive practices are associated with more bullying in both US and Chinese schools. However, the facts that positive practices are associated with more bullying in US schools and SEL practices with more bullying in Chinese schools are troubling. I am wondering whether one implication of the first study for the second is that interventions that focus on affective empathy may be less successful than those that focus on cognitive empathy.