Empathy and callous–unemotional traits in different bullying roles: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Abstract
Bullying is an extremely damaging type of violence that is present in schools all over the world, but there are still many gaps in knowledge regarding different variables that might influence the phenomenon. Two promising research lines focus on empathy and callous-unemotional traits but findings from individual studies seem to be contradictory. This article reports the results of a systematic review and a meta-analysis on empathy and callous-unemotional traits in relation to school bullying based on 53 empirical reports that met the inclusion criteria. Bullying perpetration is negatively associated with cognitive (odds ratio [ OR] = 0.60) and affective ( OR = 0.51) empathy. Perpetration is also positively associated with callous-unemotional traits ( OR = 2.55). Bully-victims scored low in empathy ( OR = 0.57). There is a nonsignificant association between victimization and empathy ( OR = 0.96), while the relationship between callous-unemotional traits and victimization is significant but small ( OR = 1.66). Defenders scored high on cognitive ( OR = 2.09) and affective ( OR = 2.62) empathy. These findings should be taken into account in explaining and preventing bullying.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Bully/victims tend to report less empathy.
“Bully/victims tend to report more behavioral disturbances and aggressive behavior than bullies or victims or individuals not involved in bullying (Unnever, 2005), and the literature seems to indicate that these individuals tend to report less empathy (Zych et al., 2019) and fewer social and emotional skills (Habashy Hussein, 2013; Zych et al., 2019).”
From The representation of bullying in Italian primary school children: A mixed-method study comparing drawing and interview data and their association with self-report involvement in bullying events (2022) · cites this paper as Zych et al., 2019
Bully/victims tend to report fewer social and emotional skills.
“Bully/victims tend to report more behavioral disturbances and aggressive behavior than bullies or victims or individuals not involved in bullying (Unnever, 2005), and the literature seems to indicate that these individuals tend to report less empathy (Zych et al., 2019) and fewer social and emotional skills (Habashy Hussein, 2013; Zych et al., 2019).”
From The representation of bullying in Italian primary school children: A mixed-method study comparing drawing and interview data and their association with self-report involvement in bullying events (2022) · cites this paper as Zych et al., 2019
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 102 · Cited by 248
- Authors
- Zych, I., Ttofi, M. M., & Farrington, D. P.
- Affiliations
- University of Córdoba (ES)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Zych, Izabela
- Venue
- Trauma, Violence, & Abuse
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-12-27
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 3-21
- ISSN
- 1524-8380 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-8324
- OpenAlex
- W2572688100
- Cited by
- 248
- References
- 102
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 6
- FWCI
- 2.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Trauma Violence & Abuse (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Workplace Violence and Bullying
- Keywords
- school bullying, empathy, callous-unemotional traits, bullying perpetration, bullying victimization, bully-victims, defenders, cognitive empathy, affective empathy, bullying prevention
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Affect, Child, Empathy, Female, Humans, Male, Students, Violence, Crime Victims, Bullying
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
