- Bullying

What Is Empathy?

Greater Good, Feb 05, 2014

"Empathy reduces bullying: Studies of Mary Gordon’s innovative Roots of Empathy program have found that it decreases bullying and aggression among kids, and makes them kinder and more inclusive toward their peers. An unrelated study found that bullies lack “affective empathy” but not cognitive empathy, suggesting that they know how their victims feel but lack the kind of empathy that would deter them from hurting others."

WHEN IT COMES TO BULLYING, EMPATHY SUCCEEDS WHERE ZERO TOLERANCE FAILS

5 July 2012

"Many schools continue to address bullying with swift and severe punishment. But research indicates that zero tolerance approaches are simply not effective. They don't improve the behavior of the bully (or the victim), nor do they improve school climate and safety. The phrase in the Middle Ages was 'as above, so below,' which you can also apply to schools,” said Nicholas Carlisle, executive director of No Bully. It is a citizen sector organization (a k a nonprofit) based in the San Francisco Bay area that applies innovative, long-term solutions to school harassment and violence. No Bully recently won the Judge's Award in the Ashoka Changemakers “Activating Empathy: Transforming Schools to Teach What Matters” competition."

Bullying and Empathy: A Short-Term Longitudinal Investigation

Stavrinides, Panayiotis; Georgiou, Stelios; Theofanous, Vaso

Educational Psychology, v30 n7 p793-802 Dec 2010

"The aim of this study was to test the direction of effect in the relationship between bullying and empathy. The participants were 205 sixth-grade students, randomly selected from urban and rural schools in Cyprus. A six-month, two-time-point longitudinal design was used in which the participants completed the bullying subscale of the Revised Bullying and Victimisation Questionnaire (BVQ-R) and the Basic Empathy Scale.

The results of this study showed that bullying at Time 1 negatively predicted the affective component of empathy at Time 2. Moreover, children's affective empathy at Time 1 negatively predicted bullying at Time 2. The results of this study indicate towards a reciprocal model of understanding the relationship between bullying and empathy. "

In: Developing the Social Empathy Index: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

(Segal+ 2012)"

"The absence of empathy can lead to destructive behaviors and adversely affect relationships. A lack of interpersonal empathy is associated with

• - narcissism,

• - bullying,

• - violent crime,

• - abusive parenting,

• - spousal battering, and

• - sexual offending

(Covell, Huss,& Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 2007;

Elsegood & Duff, 2010;

Gini, Albieri, Benelli, & Altoe, 2008;

Joliffe & Farrington,

2004; Ritter et al., 2011)