The Relationship Between Empathy And Cyberbullying

Through observation, humans are able to recognize and understand how another person is feeling, and in turn, they are able to share in those feelings, without having to experience the emotional situation themselves. This ability is known as empathy. Empathy is a construct that refers to the mental processes that enables humans to emotionally connect with other people, and it is what allows others to perceive your unspoken emotions. It is also what enables people to respond to the feelings of others with emotions that are appropriate to the situation. For instance, empathy is the driving force that causes people to feel compassion for someone that is in distress, as opposed to feeling indifference. In sum, empathy is the ability to recognize

Though, with cyberbullying to be seemingly on the rise, there has been a growing body of literature emerging in the scientific community that has aimed to examine this specific relationship. Thus far, the research findings have consistently observed the same negative relationship between feelings of empathy and cyberbullying behaviors that have been established between empathy and traditional bullying (Brewer & Kerslake, 2015; Schultze-Krumbholz et al., 2016; Steffgen et al., 2011). The recent studies have revealed that as cyberbullying incidents go up, feelings of empathy are found to diminish. This means that the teens that have engaged in cyberbullying behaviors were more commonly found to report feeling lower levels empathy than nonbullies. In fact, low empathy levels have been found to be a good predicter of cyberbullying aggression, suggesting that teens who demonstrate a lack of empathy may be at risk for cyberbullying (Brewer & Kerslake, 2015; Steffgen et al., 2011). While a causation cannot yet be identified in this relationship, the findings have encouraged many people to consider empathy training as an intervention for

This may increase the likelihood of a cyberbully, that is already empathy challenged, to miss the cues that tell them that the victim has had enough and may result in the bully pushing the victim over the edge of what they can emotionally handle (Ang & Goh, 2010). This emphasizes the need for teens to participate in empathy training that includes digital empathy (Steffgen et al., 2011). Some researchers have suggested that this may be accomplished by personalizing the cyberbullying stories that have resulted in suicide, and in turn, help teens see these victims as real people as opposed to just stories that they hear about in the media (Ang & Goh, 2010). For instance, researchers Hicks, Le Clair, and Berry (2016) have found success by implementing dramatic reenactment empathy training. In their research, they have teens reenact cyberbullying scenarios, with each teen having a turn at playing a different role of either the victim, the victim’s family member, or a bystander. After the reenactment, each teen must describe the feelings that their character felt, and then they have a group discussion that covers each of those