An Empathy training for sensitizing adolescents for cyberbullying on social media: a cross‐national study

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• dc.contributor.author Börsting, Johanna
• dc.contributor.author Schwarze, Veronica
• dc.contributor.author Theophilou, Emily
• dc.contributor.author Sánchez-Reina, J. Roberto
• dc.contributor.author Odakura, Valguima
• dc.contributor.author Taibi, Davide
• dc.contributor.author Scifo, Lidia
• dc.contributor.author Fulantelli, Giovanni
• dc.contributor.author Hernández-Leo, Davinia
• dc.contributor.author Eimler, Sabrina C.
• dc.date.accessioned 2025-04-04T06:18:09Z
• dc.date.available 2025-04-04T06:18:09Z
• dc.date.issued 2025
• dc.description Data de publicació electrònica: 07-02-2025
• dc.description.abstract Young people worldwide use social media. Besides the benefits, such as communication, entertainment, or social support, users also have to deal with negative incidents, such as cyberbullying and its serious consequences. One key factor in mitigating cyberbullying is empathy. Therefore, we developed an empathy training for adolescents, which is led by a virtual learning companion in a social media-like environment and includes direct conversations between the user and the virtual learning companion as well as a video explicating the concept of empathy. This empathy training shall contribute to decreasing users’ bullying intentions and increasing their empathy. Since previous research shows that social media use and cyberbullying are linked to country-specific factors, we evaluated the empathy training in a cross-national experimental study with N = 332 participants from Brazil, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Data were collected via surveys during workshops in schools. Among others, participants answered questions regarding their cyberbullying intentions, levels of cognitive and affective empathy, intentions to help a victim of cyberbullying, and perceived support of the measure. Results show neither decreased bullying intentions nor increased empathy after empathy training. However, cross-national differences were found. Participants’ intentions to bully were significantly higher in Spain and Brazil than in Germany. Furthermore, in the current study, cognitive and affective empathy was significantly higher in the Italian sample than in the German sample. Possibilities for improving the empathy training and the role of cross-national differences are discussed.
• dc.description.sponsorship Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The research leading to these results received funding from the Volkswagen Foundation under Grant Agreement Ref. 95 566. The UPF authors also acknowledge funding from the Spanish Ministry MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (PID2020-112584RB-C33) and the Government of Catalonia (SGR 00930). DHL (Serra Hunter) was supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia program.
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Börsting J, Schwarze V, Theophilou E, Sánchez-Reina JR, Odakura V, Taibi D, et al. An empathy training for sensitizing adolescents for cyberbullying on social media: a cross‐national study. Int J Bullying Prev. 2025 Feb 7. DOI: 10.1007/s42380-024-00268-z
• dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42380-024-00268-z
• dc.identifier.issn 2523-3653
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/70093
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher Springer
• dc.relation.ispartof International Journal of Bullying Prevention. 2025 Feb 7.
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/PID2020-112584RB-C33
• dc.rights This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• dc.subject.keyword Empathy training
• dc.subject.keyword Social media
• dc.subject.keyword Cyberbullying
• dc.subject.keyword Adolescents
• dc.subject.keyword Virtual learning companion
• dc.subject.keyword Cross-national study
• dc.title An Empathy training for sensitizing adolescents for cyberbullying on social media: a cross‐national study
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion