Resumen de El papel de la empatía como mecanismo de reducción del acoso escolar
María del Prado Silván Ferrero, Elena Gaviria, Antonio Bustillos López
The present study focused on a specific characteristic that has been proposed as a possible moderator ofaggressive and social behavior: empathic responsiveness. In addition, we have tested the relationshipamong empathy, group identity and bullying behaviour.Current approaches describe dispositional empathy as a multidimensional construct that has bothcognitive and affective/emotional components (Davis, 1994). The aim of this study was to test the effectsof these two different kinds of empathy on bullying behaviour. Drawing on the literature on this particulartopic, we tested the hypothesis of a negative relation between empathy and bullying behavior in a highschool sample. Our results show that what bullies lack are affective empathic skills or, in other words, theability to appreciate the emotional consequences of their behaviors on other people’s feelings and shareand empathize with the feelings of others. However there were no differences in cognitive empathybetween the bullies and the victims. Furthermore, those with higher group identity, feel less affectiveempathy towards bullying victims.Our results emphasize the need to consider the different effects of cognitive/affective empathy onbullying behaviour, and the role of group identification as a variable that is perpetuating bullying inscholar settings.
