Psychological Development and Education ›› 2023, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (4): 532-541.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2023.04.09

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The Relationship between Children and Adolescent's Bullying Behavior and Callous-unemotional Traits and Empathy: A Cross-lagged Analysis

JI Linqin, ZOU Xiaohui, ZHANG Lulu, ZHANG Liang   

  1. School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014
  • Published:2023-07-19

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Abstract: On a sample of 1233 students of grade 3, grade 4 and grade 7 (Meanage = 10.92±1.70 ; 623 boys) who were followed up for one year, the current study examined the bidirectional relationship between bullying, callous-unemotional traits, and empathy by latent cross-lagged modeling. The results revealed that: (1) Bullying was positively correlated with callous-unemotional traits, and negatively correlated with cognitive empathy and emotional empathy; (2) Previous callous-unemotional traits positively predicted subsequent bullying, while previous bullying negatively predicted cognitive empathy, but empathy was not predictive of subsequent bullying, nor bullying predictive of subsequent callous-unemotional traits; (3) There were cross-gender consistency and cross-grade consistency in associations between bullying, callous-unemotional traits and empathy. The results indicated that in the process of prevention and intervention of school bullying, we should pay attention to student with callous-unemotional traits to prevent them from bullying others, and at the same time, interventions should be implemented to intervene the bullies from causing greater harm to the development of empathy.

Key words: bullying, callous-unemotional traits, cognitive empathy, affective empathy, cross-lagged analysis

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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