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Emotion recognition abilities and empathy of victims of bullying

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Woods, Sarah, Wolke, Dieter, Nowicki, Stephen and Hall, Lynne (2009) Emotion recognition abilities and empathy of victims of bullying. Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol.33 (No.5). pp. 307-311. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.11.002 ISSN 0145-2134.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.11.002

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Abstract

Objectives: Bullying is a form of systematic abuse by peers with often serious consequences for victims. Few studies have considered the role of emotion recognition abilities and empathic behaviour for different bullying roles. This study investigated physical and relational bullying involvement in relation to basic emotion recognition abilities, and empathic styles in children. Using the framework of the Social Information Processing model, it was expected that victims would have poor emotion recognition abilities, and that bullies would demonstrate low levels of empathy.
Methods: Data was collected from UK children (N = 373) aged 9-11 years who completed a bullying instrument, the Bryant Index of Empathy measurement, and the DANVA (Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy) to assess emotion recognition abilities. Children were classified into physical and relational bullying roles (bully, victim, bully/victim neutral) for analytical purposes.
Results: While physical victims, bullies and neutrals differed little in their emotion recognition abilities, relational victims were particularly poor in recognising negative emotions of anger and fear in faces. No differences were found in empathy scores, according to bullying roles.
Conclusions: Children who are relationally victimised are poorer in understanding emotional information than bullies and non-involved children. In light of previous research that victims of bullying more frequently experience child abuse, future interventions should consider the importance of emotion and social skills training for these vulnerable children.

Item Type:

Journal Article

Alternative Title:

This research was conducted as part of the VICTEC project (IST-2001-33310) (www.victec.org), part-funded by the European Community Framework V Program.

Subjects:

B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology

Divisions:

Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):

Bullying -- England -- Hertfordshire, Bullying in schools, Aggressiveness in children -- Great Britain, Emotions in children, Empathy in children, Human information processing in children

Journal or Publication Title:

Child Abuse & Neglect

Publisher:

Elsevier

ISSN:

0145-2134

Official Date:

May 2009

Dates:

Date	Event
May 2009	Published

Volume:

Vol.33

Number:

No.5

Page Range:

pp. 307-311

DOI:

10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.11.002

Status:

Peer Reviewed

Access rights to Published version:

Open Access (Creative Commons)

Description:

This research was conducted as part of the VICTEC project (IST-2001-33310) (www.victec.org), part-funded by the European Community Framework V Program.

Funder:

Fifth Framework Programme (European Commission) (FP5)

Version or Related Resource:

This is the post print version of the work: Woods, S. et al. (2009). Emotion recognition abilities and empathy of victims of bullying. Child Abuse & Neglect, (forthcoming). A version bearing proof correction marks can be found here: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/703/

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