Bullying. Can Empathy Training Help?
Format
Poster Presentation
Location
Harborside Center
Strand #1
Safety & Violence Prevention
Relevance
It is proposed that students who receive empathy training are less likely to bully. Participants will learn practical ways to implement empathy training. There will be a hands on session.
Brief Program Description
Empathetic behavior will not just reduce bullying in our schools, but will also help our children build healthy relationships. There is no debate about widespread negative impact of bullying in our school system. Empathy as a skill is a learnt behavior and therefore it can be taught to the school children to help respond to the situation of bullying. The researchers from the University Of New Hampshire (UNH) state, teaching children empathy can help reduce bullying. Along with a hands on training on Empathy, the participants will learn to implement the training in their own schools. Our comparison group, using post-test only questionnaire noted that children with empathy training were less likely to bully or engage in bullying than those who had not completed (p=0.00) empathy training. The authors believe that empathy is essential to developing and maintaining healthy relationships.
Summary
Bullying is uninvited, aggressive, intimidating behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior causes hurt, harm, or humiliation to the person being bullied. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose (nobullying.com). Bullying can cause both physical and emotional harm. Empathy is fundamental to emotional intelligence and play a crucial role in preventing bullying. To be empathetic is to have the ability to identify other people’s feelings and emotions. It is the ability to fit in someone else’s shoes and share in their feelings and sensations and predict how one is “suppose to feel”. It begins with such a supposition thought that enables the aggressor to stop, and seek a dialogue about a situation or a person followed by an action or behavior. Empathy Training includes all there components. A hands on exercise will be conducted, where the participants will actually receive empathy training. They can then replicate this in their classroom with students.
Empathy training will help establish a peaceful coexistence and in turn alleviate bullying in our schools. In fact researchers from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) states teaching children empathy can help reduce bullying. To test this view, we conducted our own research. The authors believe that empathy is essential to developing and maintaining healthy relationships.
Evidence
Using the sample of convenience we identified 100 boys and girls between the ages of 8-16. Using comparison group non randomized sampling method, 50 were given empathy training while the other 50 received no training at all. Using a Likert Scale a 13 items questionnaire was administered that measured Belief about bullying and Willingness to bully. The results show that children with empathy training were less likely to bully or engage in bullying than those who had not completed (p=0.00) empathy training. The authors believe that empathy is essential to developing and maintaining healthy relationships.
Biographical Sketch
Anika Futch (Master of Social Work Student)
Rashuanna Taylor (Master of Social Work Student)
Dr. Shinaz Jindani (Advisor Master of Social Work)
Keyword Descriptors
Bullying, Prevention, Empathy training
Presentation Year
2016
Start Date
3-8-2016 4:00 PM
End Date
3-8-2016 5:30 PM
Recommended Citation
Taylor, Rashuanna; Futch, Anika; and Jindani, Shinaz, "Bullying. Can Empathy Training Help?" (2016). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 68.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2016/2016/68
Bullying. Can Empathy Training Help?
Harborside Center
Empathetic behavior will not just reduce bullying in our schools, but will also help our children build healthy relationships. There is no debate about widespread negative impact of bullying in our school system. Empathy as a skill is a learnt behavior and therefore it can be taught to the school children to help respond to the situation of bullying. The researchers from the University Of New Hampshire (UNH) state, teaching children empathy can help reduce bullying. Along with a hands on training on Empathy, the participants will learn to implement the training in their own schools. Our comparison group, using post-test only questionnaire noted that children with empathy training were less likely to bully or engage in bullying than those who had not completed (p=0.00) empathy training. The authors believe that empathy is essential to developing and maintaining healthy relationships.
