SynthesisJournal of youth and adolescence2015
Empathy and involvement in bullying in children and adolescents: a systematic review.
Synthesis in Journal of youth and adolescence, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 75 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
75 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 369 citations in OpenAlex.
- Stability and Change of Bullying Behavior in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Pooled it
- Does Empathy Predict Bullying, or Does Bullying Predict Empathy? A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of the relationship between bullying and depressive symptoms in children and adolescents.BMC psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Adolescent Empathy Influences Bystander Defending in School Bullying: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Pooled it
- Effect of cognitive-behavioral therapy-based physical play intervention on empathic ability of children with intellectual disabilities.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- School Bullies' Intention to Change Behavior Following Teacher Interventions: Effects of Empathy Arousal, Condemning of Bullying, and Blaming of the Perpetrator.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2016Trial
- Emotional Valence Influences Empathic Capacity in Adolescence and Young Adulthood.Journal of adolescence · 2026Article
- Mechanisms of moral disengagement as predictors of direct and indirect bullying perpetration: a short-term longitudinal study.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Digital She-nanigans: Social media users' response toward online hostilities targeting a female science communicator with marginalized identities.New media & society · 2026Article
- Do school bullies defend? The moderating roles of classroom bullying norms and parental autonomy support among Chinese adolescents.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Perceived Social Support, Empathy, and Adolescents' Defending Behavior: Examining Between-Person and Within-Person Relations.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Article
- Cognitive and affective empathy predict young children's involvement in bullying one year later.JCPP advances · 2026Article
- Differential impacts of audiovisual information on empathic accuracy in people with schizophrenia and high social anhedonia.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Callous-Unemotional Traits, Moral Disengagement, and Prosocial and Bullying Behaviors in Adolescence: Disentangling Between- and Within-Person Associations.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Article
- Invisible scars, collapsed trust: a mixed-methods inquiry into the cognitive-empathic divide in school bullying and a systemic intervention framework.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Analysis of the Emotional Dynamics Associated with the Affective, Cognitive, and Behavioral Dimensions of Empathy among Adolescent Bystanders of Bullying Situations in Physical Education Classes.Psychologica Belgica · 2026Article
- Unveiling multi-level determinants on empathy among Chinese primary and secondary school students: evidence from SSES 2019.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- The "Measure of Empathy in Early Childhood": Psychometric Properties and Associations with Externalizing Problems and Callous Unemotional Traits.Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Article
- The Link Between Mothers' Parental Burnout and Adolescent Aggression: The Roles of Maternal Rejection and Adolescent Empathy.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- When motivation isn't enough: perceived teacher attitudes, efficacy, and efforts moderate student responses to bullying.BMC psychology · 2025Article
15 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Based on the premise that bullies are deficient in empathy or even lack it completely, bullying prevention and intervention programs often include empathy training. These programs are not always as effective as they aim to be, which may be caused by a failure to acknowledge the multidimensional nature of empathy as well as its complex association with involvement in bullying. To provide a clear overview of the research on the association between empathy and involvement in bullying, this article systematically reviews 40 studies on the association of cognitive empathy (24 studies) and affective empathy (38 studies) with four categories of involvement in bullying: bullying, victimization, defending, and bystanding. The results showed that bullying was negatively associated with cognitive and-in particular-affective empathy. Victimization was negatively associated with cognitive empathy but not with affective empathy. Defending was consistently positively associated with both types of empathy. Contradictory findings were observed in bystanding, with studies reporting both negative and positive associations with cognitive empathy, and studies reporting negative and no associations with affective empathy. Together, the findings stress the importance of the distinction between cognitive and affective empathy in involvement in bullying and suggest different intervention strategies for the four types of involvement in bullying.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.