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. ISSN 0145-2134

Preview	PDF (Article Main Text.) WRAP_Wolke_emotionabilities_bullying_ChildAbuseNeglect_shortreport_Jan08.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader Download (112Kb)
Preview	PDF (Cover Sheet.) WRAP_Wolke_Title_Page_Emotion_recognition.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader Download (15Kb)

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 > 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
Date:	May 2009
Volume:	Vol.33
Number:	No.5
Page Range:	pp. 307-311
Identification Number:	10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.11.002
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
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/
Related URLs:	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/jou...
References:	Archer and Coyne, 2005 J. Archer and S.M. Coyne, An integrated review of indirect, relational and social aggress, Personality and Social Psychology Review 9 (2005), pp. 212–230. Arsenio and Lemerise, 2001 W.F. Arsenio and E.A. Lemerise, Varieties of childhood bullying: Values, emotion processes and social competence, Social Development 10 (1) (2001), pp. 59–73. Bryant, 1982 B.K. Bryant, An index of empathy for children and adolescents, Child Development 53 (1) (1982), pp. 413–425. Camodeca et al., 2003 M. Camodeca, F.A. Goossens, C. Schuengel and M.M. Terwogt, Links between social informative processing in middle childhood and involvement in bullying, Aggressive Behavior 29 (2) (2003), pp. 116–127. Crick and Dodge, 1994 N.R. Crick and K.A. Dodge, A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children's social adjustment, Psychological Bulletin 115 (1) (1994), pp. 74–101. Crick and Grotpeter, 1995 N.R. Crick and J.K. Grotpeter, Relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment, Child Development 66 (1995), pp. 710–722. Dautenhahn et al., 2007 K. Dautenhahn, S. Woods and C. Kaouri, Possible connections between bullying behaviour, empathy and imitation. In: K. Dautenhahn and C. Nehaniv, Editors, Models and mechanisms of imitation and social learning in robots, humans and animals: Behavioural social and communicative dimensions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2007), pp. 323–339. Fox and Boulton, 2005 C.L. Fox and M.J. Boulton, The social skills of victims of bullying: Self, peer and teacher perceptions, British Journal of Educational Psychology 75 (2005), pp. 313–328. Jolliffe and Farrington, 2006 D. Jolliffe and D.P. Farrington, Examining the relationship between low empathy and bullying, Aggressive Behavior 32 (2006), pp. 540–550. Nowicki, 2005 S.J. Nowicki, The manual for the Diagnostic Analyses of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA) tests, Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA (2005). Nowicki and Duke, 1994 S. Nowicki Jr. and M.P. Duke, Individual differences in nonverbal communication of effect: The diagnostic analysis of nonverbal accuracy scale (DANVA), Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour 18 (1994), pp. 9–35. Sharp and Smith, 1994 In: S. Sharp and P.K. Smith, Editors, Tackling bullying in your school (1st ed.), Routledge, London (1994). Stassen Berger, 2007 K. Stassen Berger, Update on bullying at school: A science forgotten?, Developmental Review 27 (2007), pp. 90–126. Sutton, 2001 J. Sutton, Bullies: Thugs or thinkers?, The Psychologist 14 (10) (2001), pp. 530–534. Sutton et al., 1999 J. Sutton, P.K. Smith and J. Swettenham, Bullying and ‘theory of mind’: A critique of the ‘social skills deficit’ view of anti-social behaviour, Social Development 8 (1) (1999), pp. 117–127. Wolke and Samara, 2004 D. Wolke and M. Samara, Bullied by siblings: Association with peer victimisation and behaviour problems in Israeli lower secondary school children, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45 (5) (2004), pp. 1015–1029. Wolke and Stanford, 1999 D. Wolke and K. Stanford, Bullying in school children. In: D. Messer and S. Millar, Editors, Developmental psychology, Arnold Publisher, London (1999), pp. 341–360. Wolke et al., 2000 D. Wolke, S. Woods, L. Bloomfield and L. Karstadt, The association between direct and relational bullying and behaviour problems among primary school children, The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 41 (8) (2000), pp. 989–1002.
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/715

Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge

Request changes to a record

Actions (login required)

View Item