Cyberbullying Among Adolescents the Role of Affective and Cognitive Empathy and Gender

Cyberbullying by Singapore Adolescents

Cyberbullying and Empathy

An inverse relationship between empathy and traditional bullying has been well established empirically (reviewed by Ang and Goh, 2010). Whether the same claim can be made about cyberbullying is unknown, although research data indicates that the anonymity of online bullying may encourage such behavior. Direct bullying, which commonly involves physical aggression, has been shown to be associated with poor affective empathy. In contrast, indirect bullying, such as backstabbing behaviors, is associated with poor cognitive empathy. Affective empathy is the ability to share emotional experiences, whereas cognitive empathy is the ability to understand the emotional experiences of others.

The interaction between gender and empathy has been studied extensively, and boys generally score lower in this respect (reviewed by Ang and Goh, 2010). However, gender seems to have a bigger impact on affective, rather than cognitive empathy. How these forms of empathy and gender interact with cyberbullying prevalence, especially in the understudied Asian adolescent population, is the focus of the research article by Ang and Goh (2010).

Methods

The sample was 173 boys, 219 girls, and 4 gender-unknown Singapore adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 and attending public schools (Ang and Goh, 2010). The ethnicity was primarily Chinese (60.4%), followed by Malasian (19.7%), Indian (8.1%), and other or unknown.

Two instruments were used (Ang and Goh, 2010). The first questionnaire had 20 items to probe the cognitive and affective empathy of subjects. The second 9-item questionnaire assessed cyberbullying behavior.

Results

Overall, 23.6% and 15.1% of boys and girls, respectively, reported being involved in cyberbullying (Ang and Goh, 2010). Of these, only 3.7% and 0.9% of boys and girls, respectively, were categorized as frequent bullies. Although girls were significantly more likely to report better affective and cognitive empathy abilities (p < 0.01), gender was not a significant predictor of cyberbullying behavior. However, when a moderated multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the data, a significant (p < 0.01) three-way interaction between affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and gender was found in relation to cyberbullying. Among boys and girls who scored low on affective empathy, low cognitive empathy scores predicted more cyberbullying. The same was true for boys who scored high in affective empathy, but their female counterparts were equally likely to engage in cyberbullying whether they scored high or low in terms of cognitive empathy.

Discussion and Critique

The results of this study were generally consistent with findings from previous studies (reviewed by Ang and Goh, 2010), which provides validation for concluding that cyberbullying prevalence among adolescents is a universal trait. The consistent findings included the overall cyberbullying prevalence, and girls scoring higher in empathy overall and affective empathy in particular. In addition, cognitive empathy was associated with the greatest difference in cyberbullying scores for boys in general and girls scoring low in affective empathy. This too is consistent with the theory that cyberbullying is similar to indirect bullying, which has been shown to be associated with cognitive empathy.

These results are undermined by how infrequent girls self-reported being frequent bullies. A prevalence of 0.9% translates into just 2 girls being frequent bullies, which may explain why girls with high scores in affective empathy did not differ by cognitive empathy in terms of cyberbullying. A larger sample size might instill more confidence in this finding.