Common use of Present Study Clause in Contracts

Present Study. This study examined the effects of children’s bullying involvement and gender on empathy by considering the bullying role and gender of both the participant (the empathizing children) and the target (the objects of empathy). Whereas previous research on bullying and empathy focused on a broad range of targets, this study focuses on specific familiar peers (classmates). We first investigated whether child- ▇▇▇’s empathy for a specific classmate depended on children’s own bullying involvement. That is, we tested whether bullies, victims, bully/victims, and nonin- volved children differed in cognitive and affective empathy for these specific peers. Because previous research on this association yielded inconsistent results (see van Noorden et al., 2015), this test was exploratory. We did not expect an interaction between the bullying role and gender of the empathizing children as few gender dif- ferences have been found in the association between bullying involvement and empathy (▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ et al.). Previous research indicates that emotion-related processes depend on target characteristics (▇▇▇▇▇ et al., 2013; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ & ▇▇▇▇▇, 1992). Therefore, we hypothe- sized that the bullying role of the target plays a role in how much empathy children feel for him or her. Furthermore, we expected that the effect of target bullying role might depend on the empathizer’s own bullying role. Thus, we tested whether bul- lies, victims, bully/victims, and noninvolved children differed in their cognitive and affective empathy for other bullies, victims, bully/victims, and noninvolved children. Because denying oneself empathy for specific others may be a way to prevent nega- tive emotions after aggressing against them, we expected bullies to have less empa- thy for victims and bully/victims than for noninvolved children. We hypothesized that victims would have less empathy for bullies and bully/victims than noninvolved children, because victims might be less likely to understand and experience the emotions of children who are able to harm other children. Hypotheses regarding bully/victims were exploratory. On the one hand bully/victims may have less empa- thy for bullies and victims than for noninvolved children. They may show less empathy toward victims in order to feel less negative about their own bullying behavior; they may show less empathy toward bullies because these bullies may have hurt them, and they do not want to be emotionally connected to their bullies. On the other hand, it is also possible that bully/victims do not differentiate between bullies, victims, and noninvolved peers—or may even have more empathy for bul- lies and victims than for noninvolved peers—based on having been shared experiences in the position of a bully as well as a victim, making it easier to relate to both groups of peers. Whether noninvolved children distinguished between bul- lies, victims, and bully/victims was tested exploratively. We explored whether these effects were further qualified by the gender of the child and the target. As our participants were 7–12-year-old children, based on Bry- ant (1982) we expected that girls would have more cognitive and affective empathy for girls, but that boys would not differentiate between girls and boys. Because only one boy and one girl were included in each bullying role, empathy towards one’s own role was not investigated. Based on distinct associations with bullying involve- ment (▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ et al., 2015), cognitive and affective empathy were considered separately throughout the study.