There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
<p class="first" id="d824741e75">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.
</p>