Empathy and peer violence among adolescents: Moderation effect of gender

Abstract

The study examined the relationships between empathy and peer violence among adolescents, along with gender as a moderator in these associations. Thereby, multidimensionality of empathy (affective and cognitive empathy) and different forms of violence (physical, verbal, and relational) were considered. The participants were 646 high school students (aged 15- to 19-years-old) from Serbia. The findings revealed that only the cognitive dimension of empathy was related to violence, namely to physical and relational violence, while relations between the empathy dimensions and verbal violence were not significant. Gender moderated only the relation between cognitive empathy and physical violence, in a way that there was significant negative relation only among boys. Cognitive empathy was negatively related to relational violence, regardless of gender. The results are discussed in the context of the characteristics of violent interactions among adolescents, and recommendations are given for violence prevention programs in high schools.

Keywords

adolescents affective empathy cognitive empathy high school students peer violence

Over time, peer violence has become one of the problems that students attending school face on a daily basis (Nickerson, Mele, & Princiotta, 2008). Results of previous studies point to a conclusion that the consequences of early violence exposure are great (Olweus, 1995). Research findings suggest that children and adolescents who can be characterized as violent or as bullies at school, have more conduct problems, have more peer-problems, and lack prosocial behavior (Busch, Laninga-Wijnen, van Yperen, Schrijvers, & De Leeuw, 2015). Also, they can have problems with the law later in life (Oliver, Hoover, & Hazler, 1994). On the other hand, it was shown that victimization can lead to internalizing psychosocial problems (Arseneault, Bowes, & Shakoor, 2010). Because of these relations, preventing peer violence is an important issue.

Olweus (1999, p. 12) defines violence as ‘aggressive behavior where the actor or perpetrator uses his or her own body or an object (including a weapon) to inflict (relatively serious) injury or discomfort upon another individual’. At this point, it is important to note the differences between violence and bullying, since these terms are often mixed. Although both are subcategories of aggression, bullying includes imbalance of power or strength between a bully and a victim, as well as repetitiveness of negative or aggressive acts, while violence does not have to include these characteristics. Some authors define violence as extreme physical aggression (e.g. Howells, Daffern, & Day, 2008). Considering that other forms of extreme aggression could also cause discomfort, it is reasonable not to limit violence only to physical violence, which is also recognized by WHO (Krug, Mercy, Dahlberg, & Zwi, 2002). Namely WHO includes, among others, psychological violence as one of the forms of violence.

Gender differences in peer violence

Gender is usually singled out as one of the most important predictors of violence. Results from previous studies, conducted among primary school children, indicated that boys from different age groups are more likely to exhibit direct forms of violence, such as physical and verbal violence, while girls are more inclined to engage in indirect and relational forms of violence (Archer, 2004; Björkqvist, Lagerspetz, & Kaukiainen, 1992; Coid & Yang, 2010; Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Espelage, Bosworth, & Simon, 2000; Österman et al., 1998; Pepler, Jiang, Craig, & Connolly, 2008). However, a number of studies call into question gender differences in relational violence among older age groups, i.e. adolescents (Card, Stucky, Sawalani, & Little, 2008; Goldstein, Young, & Bond, 2008; Joliffe & Farrington, 2011; Nansel et al., 2001; Österman et al., 1998; Roland & Idsøe, 2001; Sokolovska, Dinić, & Marinković, 2015; Swearer, 2008). It could be assumed that gender differences in relational or indirect violence diminish during later adolescence when males' social skills develop (Coyne, Nelson, & Underwood, 2010; Puckett, Aikins, & Cillessen, 2008).

A form of violence which could be linked to relational violence is cyber-violence. Regarding gender differences in cyber-violence, results showed that girls are more likely to be perpetrators at the age of 14, compared to boys who are more likely to be perpetrators at a younger age (Erdur-Baker & Tanrikulu, 2010; Kowalski & Limber, 2007). However, one recent meta-analysis showed that age moderated gender differences in cyber-violence: Females showed more engagement in cyber-violence during early to mid-adolescence, while males showed more engagement during later adolescence. Nevertheless, effect sizes of these differences were small (Barlett & Coyne, 2014).

Although empirical findings on gender differences in peer violence are well documented, it seems that gender effect is still not explored enough in the context of some other factors that affect peer violence. In other words, gender may have an effect on violence in less direct ways. This potential gender effect is the focus in this study, which is aimed at exploring the moderation effect of gender in relations between empathy and violence.

Empathy and peer violence

In addition to gender, other factors stand out as significant correlates of violence. In this paper the focus is on empathy, having in mind that the role of empathy in prevention of violence has been increasingly gaining attention (Grossman et al., 1997; Orpinas, Parcel, McAlister, & Frankowski, 1995; Walker et al., 1996). Davis (1983) considers empathy to be the ability to understand and perceive other people's emotional states, including the ability to react in accordance with them. Hoffman (1987) expands this definition by stating that an individual's experienced emotion and their emotional response must be more congruent to the situation of the other person, i.e. to the emotional state of the other person than to one's own situation. Empathy can be described by means of various indicators, including emotional and cognitive markers. Bearing this in mind, many authors claim that the basic dimensions of empathy are the affective and the cognitive dimension (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Eisenberg & Strayer, 1987). The affective dimension involves an individual's ability to experience another person's emotions and to share emotions with another person, while the cognitive dimension implies the individual's ability to comprehend and understand the other person's point of view and emotions. Affective empathy develops spontaneously in early childhood and remains relatively stable over time, while cognitive empathy becomes more sophisticated and more evident during adolescence compared with earlier periods of one's childhood (Eisenberg, Cumberland, Guthrie, Murphy, & Shepard, 2005).

Relations between empathy and prosocial behavior are in place during childhood (Strayer & Roberts, 2004), adolescence (Cohen & Strayer, 1996; LeSure-Lester, 2000), and adulthood, in which these relations become stronger and are transferred into one's interpersonal functioning (Espelage, Mebane, & Adams, 2004; Zhou et al., 2002). Although studies confirming a significant relation between empathy and violence are more common, one should not ignore the studies in which this relation has not been confirmed either in early adolescence (Woods, Wolke, Nowicki, & Hall, 2009), or in late adolescence and adulthood (Lee & Prentice, 1988; Vachon, Lynam, & Johnson, 2014). Conflicting findings were found also when empathy is analysed as a multidimensional construct. In the context of high school violence, in one group of studies it was found that only the affective dimension is associated with violence (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006, 2011; Topcu & Erdur-Baker, 2012). Also, gender moderated these relationships, especially when different forms of violence are considered. For example, studies showed that low scores on the affective dimension are associated with perpetration of physical (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006, 2011; Shechtman, 2002) and relational violence among boys (Topcu & Erdur-Baker, 2012), as well as with perpetration of indirect violence among girls (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006).

The other group of studies emphasized also the role of cognitive empathy. The study by Caravita, Di Blasio, and Salmivali (2009) confirmed that the affective dimension of empathy is negatively associated with violence and only so among males, but it was also revealed that the cognitive dimension is positively associated with violence in both genders. The explanation for a positive association between cognitive empathy and violence is that violence perpetrators are, in fact, socially more competitive and that they use their ability to understand and perceive other people's emotions in order to manipulate and harass others (Björkqvist et al., 2000; Caravita et al., 2009; Kaukiainen et al., 1999). Nonetheless, this manner of using one's social skills is characteristic of leaders, i.e. of the initiators of violent interactions, but is not characteristic of those participants in violent interactions who have non-leader roles, such as reinforcers and assistants (Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999). Since cognitive empathy is connected to social skills and could be defined as an aspect of social intelligence, some authors state that it is more pronounced in relational and indirect violence (Björkqvist et al., 2000).

However, there are conflicting results concerning the direction in which cognitive empathy is associated with relational or indirect violence. It could also be expected that this association is a negative one because of hostile attribution biases among those who are more prone to indirect violence or bullying (Crick, 1995; Loudin, Loukas, & Robinson, 2003; Baron & Richardson, 1994; Yeo, Ang, Loh, Fu, & Karre, 2011). Namely, persons who are indirectly violent have hostile attribution biases, i.e. may misinterpret others' ambiguous intentions as hostile, which may result in aggressive reactions in these persons. Thus, it seems that they are not able to consider the perspective of others, which is related to lack of cognitive empathy. Findings about relations between empathy and cyber-bullying confirmed a significant role of cognitive empathy, especially in the case of boys (Ang & Goh, 2010).

Moreover, negative associations are not limited only to indirect violence nor to schoolers from the general population. In meta-analyses based on studies analysing criminal offenders and delinquents (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004; van Langen, Wissink, van Vugt, Van der Stouwe, & Stams, 2014), it was shown that the association between offenders' violent behavior and the cognitive dimension is a negative one, but still stronger than the association between offenders' violent behavior and the affective dimension. Despite this, authors emphasize that the association between empathy and violence is weaker when other variables (such as intelligence and socio-economic status) are controlled, but also that the association is influenced by the type of assessment instrument and the characteristics of the research design. There are also studies which showed that there is an association only between the cognitive dimension of empathy and violence, in a negative direction, but compared to previously mentioned studies, these studies were conducted only among primary school children (Kokkinos & Kipritsi, 2012). The form of violence which does not seem to be associated with empathy is verbal violence (Björkqvist et al., 2000; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006, 2011; Yeo et al., 2011).

Gender differences in empathy

In the case of gender differences in empathy, females are considered to be more emphatic than males, which is confirmed by findings of some neurophysiological studies (Rueckert & Naybar, 2008). Results of meta-analysis confirm that gender differences do exist, although it is emphasized that the effect size is small (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983). As far as specific dimensions of empathy are concerned, the results of previous studies point to the conclusion that females achieve higher scores for the cognitive and affective dimensions of empathy than males, but that a higher effect size is identified in the affective dimension (Albiero, Matricardi, Speltri, & Toso, 2009; Davis & Franzoi, 1991; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006; Mestre, Samper, Frías, & Tur, 2009). Gender differences in empathy could be the reason of inconsistent results in some studies regarding the relations between empathy and violence. For example, the study by Gini, Albiero, Benelli, and Altoè (2007) showed that empathy is negatively associated with violence, but only among males. Likewise, Loudin et al., 2003 found that only males who have lower scores on emotional concern are more prone to relational aggression.

The present study

During adolescence, empathy represents a very important factor of prosocial behavior, representing a preventive factor in occurrence of various forms of aggressive and violent behavior (Björkqvist et al., 2000; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Endresen & Olweus, 2001; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006, 2011; Kaukiainen et al., 1999; Mehrabian, 1997). However, previous literature has provided somewhat conflicting findings about the role of affective and cognitive empathy in violence. Having in mind that gender stands out as a dominant factor of violent behavior, and having in mind that there are gender differences in empathy, there is a need to analyse the relations between empathy and violence in the context of gender differences. Therefore, the goal of this research is to examine the relationship of empathy and peer violence among high-school students, with a moderating effect of gender. Nonetheless, this relation is not so straightforward, bearing in mind the multidimensional nature of empathy and different forms of violence. Adolescence represents an important period for the development of empathy, in particular of cognitive empathy (Eisenbergerg et al., 2005). It can be expected that cognitive empathy will have a higher contribution in explaining violence than affective empathy. Yet, some previous studies suggest that the affective dimension of empathy also plays an important role in explaining violent behavior (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006, 2011; Shechtman, 2002; Topcu & Erdur-Baker, 2012). Therefore, this study sets out to examine the contribution of both dimensions of empathy in predicting various forms of peer violence.

Method

Participants and the procedure

The participants were 646 high school students (61.9% males) from three grammar schools and five secondary vocational schools in Serbia. All participants were Caucasian, the majority of whom were of Serbian nationality (72.8%). The age of the participants ranged from 15- to 19-years-old, with 33% of them attending the second, 31.3% attending the third, and 35.6% attending the fourth grade. First-grade high school students were not included in the research, under the assumption that they still had not had enough experience in interpersonal interactions with other students, given the fact that the research was conducted in the third month of the school year. Researchers made personal visits to school principals to explain the purpose of this study and to ask for their help. In collaboration with schools' parent councils, school managements approved the research. Trained MA students administered the instruments to the participants during a regular school class. The classes were chosen to make sure that the total sample contained a proportionately approximate number of male and female students from different educational profiles and different grades. Before instruments administration, all participants were informed about the purpose of the research and about ensuring data anonymity, after which they signed an information consent form. No one declined to participate in the study.

Instruments

Peer Violence and Victimisation Questionnaire (PVVQ: Dinić, Sokolovska, & Kodžopeljić, 2014, according to Dinić, Sokolovska, Milovanović, & Oljača, 2014)

This questionnaire has two parts, each with 14 items, which provide scores for being a violent person and being a victim for the past school year. For the purpose of this study, only items which referred to perpetration of violence were used. The participants were asked to report their experience on a five-point scale (0 = never, 1 = several times in the year, 2 = several times in the month, 3 = once in the week, 4 = several times in the week). The tendencies towards three forms of violence were measured: Physical violence (e.g. slapping, pushing or hitting someone, starting a fight with someone, and coercion), verbal violence (e.g. teasing, calling-names, and yelling at someone), and relational violence (e.g. spreading rumors, telling others not to be friends with someone, and excluding someone). Cronbach's alphas for the scales are 0.80 (n = 7) for physical, 0.75 (n = 3) for verbal and 0.62 (n = 4) for relational violence.

Basic Empathy Scale (BES: Jollife & Farrington, 2006)

The BES contains 20 items, scored on a five-point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). This scale measures two dimensions of empathy: Affective (n = 11, α = 0.78) and cognitive (n = 9, α = 0.80). An example of an affective empathy item is ‘I get caught up in other people's feelings easily’, while an example of a cognitive empathy item is ‘I can usually realize quickly when a friend is angry’. BES was translated into Serbian, with the permission and supervision of Dr D. Jolliffe.

Results

Correlations and gender differences

Gender differences in direct forms of peer violence and both empathy dimensions are significant, while differences in relational violence are not (Table 1). Males are more engaged in physical and verbal violence than females, while there is no significant gender difference in relational violence. Also, males are less emphatic than females. The effect size (Cohen's d) indicated that the differences in affective empathy are large (> 0.80, according to Cohen, 1988), while the rest of significant differences are medium-size (from 0.50 to 0.80). The cognitive dimension of empathy is significantly correlated to all violence forms, while the affective dimension is significantly correlated to direct violence, but not to the relational forms of violence (Table 1). In relation to score levels in general, verbal violence is the most represented form of violence in the sample, followed by relational and physical violence, respectively. Also, on average scores, cognitive empathy is higher among students than affective empathy (t(647) = −26.37, p < 0.001).
Table 1.
Descriptives, correlations and gender differences among variables.

Physical violence Verbal violence Relational violence Affective empathy Male (n = 400)
Female (n = 245)
t(644) d

M SD M SD

Physical violence 1 4.17 5.41 1.18 2.60 8.09* 0.64

Verbal violence 0.55* 1 5.60 3.52 3.28 2.75 8.82* 0.70

Relational violence 0.55* 0.46* 1 2.82 3.17 2.86 2.99 −0.18 −0.01

Affective empathy −0.21* −0.25* −0.04 1 32.44 6.30 40.40 6.14 −15.72* −1.24

Cognitive empathy −0.25* −0.13 −0.11 0.36* 34.55 5.72 37.74 4.32 −7.53* −0.59

*
p < 0.001;

p < 0.01.

Moderation analysis

In order to test the moderation effect of gender on the relation between empathy dimensions and the three forms of violence, a set of moderation analyses was used in the PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). When the relationship between cognitive empathy and violence forms is analysed, affective empathy was set as a covariable, to control its effect on relationship, and vice versa.

In the case of predicting physical violence, the interaction between gender and cognitive empathy was significant (Table 2). A negative relationship between cognitive empathy and physical violence is significant only among males (B = −1.77, SE = 0.36, p < 0.001, low 95% CI = −2.47, high 95% CI = −1.07), as can be seen in Figure 1. Verbal violence is not related to any empathy dimensions, but it is related to gender, indicating that males have higher scores. There were no significant gender differences in relational violence. Relational violence is related to cognitive empathy, regardless of gender.
Figure 1.
Interaction between gender and cognitive empathy on physical violence.

Table 2.
Moderation effect of gender in prediction of violence forms based on empathy dimensions.

Physical violence
Verbal violence
Relational violence

B (SE) B (SE) B (SE) B (SE) B (SE) B (SE)

Gender −2.58 (0.43)* −2.47 (0.45)* 1.95 (0.310)* −1.93 (0.32)* 0.27 (0.30) 0.33 (0.31)

Cognitive empathy −1.77 (0.36)* cov. −0.19 (0.26) cov. −0.81 (0.24)*** cov.

Affective empathy cov. −0.09 (0.39) cov. −0.54 (0.29) cov. −0.07 (0.27)

Gender x Cognitive e. 1.70 (0.71)* – 0.43 (0.51) – 0.75 (0.49) –

Gender x Affective e. – 0.08 (0.65) – 0.07 (0.47) – −0.03 (0.45)

R ² 0.13* 0.12* 0.12* 0.12* 0.02* 0.02

ΔR² of interaction 0.01* 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Note: cov. = variable is set as covariable to control its effects.

***
p < 0.001;

*
p < 0.05.

Discussion

This research is aimed at examining the relations between empathy dimensions and different forms of violence among high school students, taking into consideration the moderating effect of gender. In line with the expectations and with findings of previous studies (Archer, 2004; Coid & Yang, 2010) it was found that boys are more prone to use direct forms of violence––physical and verbal. The tendency of males to engage in direct forms of violence may be one of the characteristics of successful social adaptation (Stormshak, Bierman, Bruschi, Dodge, & Coie, 1999). Namely, a male using direct forms of violence is consistent with gender stereotypes, and it enables them to gain power in a socially acceptable way, to dominate and to achieve the desired status in the society. On the other hand, relational violence is more frequently attributed to females (Björkqvist et al., 1992; Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Espelage et al., 2000; Österman et al., 1998; Pepler et al., 2008). However, in this study it was shown that gender differences in relational violence are not significant, which is in line with the findings of some previous studies based on adolescents only (Joliffe & Farrington, 2011; Österman et al., 1994; Scheithauer, Hayer, Petermann, & Jugert, 2006; Sokolovska et al., 2015), and the results of a more recent meta-analysis (Card et al., 2008). It seems that in adolescence, when social skills become more developed and the importance of achieving the best possible social standing in a group becomes more important, gender differences in relational violence disappear, as relational violence transforms into an instrument of obtaining social power (Puckett et al., 2008). In addition to this, it is possible that a contributing factor to leveling out gender differences in respect to using relational violence during adolescence is a negative correlation between direct forms of aggression and an individual's status in a peer group (Popadić, 2009). Namely, it is possible that perceiving that peers have negative attitudes towards demonstrations of direct aggression is one of the factors leading to raising awareness of undesirability of such forms of aggressive acts. As boys are more prone to direct aggression, but since they perceive that it is not desirable to exert it, it is possible that boys inclined to aggression exert it in the form of relational violence. In this way, expression of relational aggression in boys is equated with expression of relational aggression in girls.

In the case of gender differences in empathy dimensions, they are consistent with the findings of previous studies in which it was found that differences in the affective dimension are greater than in the cognitive one (Albiero et al., 2009; Davis & Franzoi, 1991; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006; Mestre et al., 2009). Although girls are, on the whole, more emphatic, greater differences are manifested in the ability to experience and go through the emotional state of another person than to perceive and understand another person's feelings.

The key finding of this research is that the cognitive dimension of empathy is associated with violence, while the affective one is not. Cognitive empathy is associated with physical and relational violence, while the relations with physical violence are under the moderating effect of gender. Namely, it was found that cognitive empathy and physical violence are negatively related only among boys, while no significant relation of this kind was found among girls. It seems that boys, unlike girls, due to boys' lowered ability to recognize the emotional state of others and to take someone else's perspective, react to conflict situations and threats with physical violence more frequently. Since boys are less capable of understanding the damage which they are inflicting to the victim, i.e. of anticipating the consequences of their violent behavior, it is easier for them to engage in physical violence.

The findings related to the prediction of physical violence are consistent with the finding of previous studies which have shown that direct violence is positively correlated to callous-unemotional traits, the defining feature of which is lack of empathy (Barry et al., 2000; Viding, Simmonds, Petrides, & Frederickson, 2009). Additionally, the aforementioned findings of this research are consistent with previous meta-analyses on prison population which have highlighted the importance of cognitive empathy in shaping violent criminal behavior (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004; van Langen et al., 2014), but are not consistent with studies which have obtained a correlation between the affective dimension of empathy and physical violence in males (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006, 2011; Shechtman, 2002). A possible explanation for this is that the role of cognitive empathy is more important when it comes to exhibiting serious forms of violence, which may be linked to violent criminal behavior. On the other hand, the role of affective empathy is more important in exhibiting less serious forms of violence. Bearing in mind that this research was based on a population sample consisting of high schoolers, the population in which the rate of physical violence decreases (Boulton & Underwood, 1992; Kodžopeljić, Smederevac, & Čolović, 2010), manifestations of physical violence in this age group occur rather as incidents than frequent forms of behavior. Consequently, it can be assumed that instances of physical violence in this age group take on the form of excessive violence with more serious consequences for the participants in violent interactions. This is supported by the findings of Boulton and Underwood (1992), who showed that although the frequency of overall physical aggression decreases with age, when violence occurs in adolescence, it becomes more serious.

Relational violence is negatively associated with the cognitive dimension of empathy, regardless of gender. In other words, both boys and girls with a low level of cognitive empathy will be prone to using relational violence. As already indicated in this study, gender differences in relational violence are not significant. This result is consistent with the view that violent people, in particular those who are prone to relational and indirect violence, have a tendency towards hostile interpretation of ambiguous or unknown situations, which is why they react to them with violence (Crick, 1995). Given that it is difficult for them to assume the viewpoint of another person, people with poorly pronounced cognitive empathy form wrong judgments about other people's behavior and intentions which, along with a pronounced tendency for hostile interpretations of social situations, increases the likelihood for occurrence of relational forms of violence.

Verbal violence is not associated with the dimensions of empathy, which is consistent with previous studies (Björkqvist et al., 2000; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006, 2011; Yeo et al., 2011). This is the most common form of violence, so it is possible that it was accepted as a common way of resolving interpersonal conflicts in peer interactions during adolescence.

Limitations and implications

The present study has some limitations that should be taken into consideration when interpreting the results. First, violence was assessed via self-report measure, and there may be a problem with shared-method variance, as with social desirability. In order to overcome this weakness, findings should be replicated with information from multiple sources by using peer and teacher nominations. Second, the period of time for which violence was investigated in the current study refers to a previous school year, which is longer than some other studies of violence and bullying (e.g. three months in Olweus, 1993), and may have led to less accurate recall of violence. However, presence of violence in this study was relatively similar to that of other studies (e.g. Kodžopeljić et al., 2010), suggesting fair comparability. Third, the cross-sectional design of this study does not allow temporal precedence to be established. It is not clear whether empathy precedes violence or violence leads to lower levels of empathy. Further studies examining the pattern of these relations longitudinally are needed. Also, some findings suggested that controlling for intelligence and socio-economic status could weaken the relations between empathy and violence (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004). Bearing this in mind, future research should include these variables in research design.

Despite these limitations, the present study has important implications with regard to violence intervention in adolescence. Decreasing of aggressive and violent behavior could be achieved by promoting positive social and emotional development. Promoting prosocial behavior through school curriculums or specially designed programs for development of social and emotional competencies results in lower incidence of aggressive and violent behavior (Greenberg, 2010; Schonert-Reichl, Smith, Zaidman-Zait, & Hertzman, 2012). Findings of this study emphasize the role of the cognitive dimension of empathy in reducing the rate of violence in adolescents, in comparison with the role of the affective dimension. In comparison with the affective dimension, the cognitive dimension of empathy is more controlled and becomes more evident as age increases (Eisenberg et al., 2005). Given that the occurrence of cognitive empathy is at least partially subject to control and self-regulation (Hodges & Wegner, 1997), i.e. it requires that an individual makes an effort to understand another person's point of view and emotional state, violence prevention programs in high schools should be more focused on gaining insight into the emotional states of others and on increasing students' awareness on the potential consequences of violence. One of the ways to do this is to use social scenarios based on discussion and role-playing in order to improve the ability to assume another person's viewpoint and to reduce taking one's own viewpoint on conflict situations. In the case of male students, prevention should be more intensely focused on anticipating the consequences of physical violence.

Because of the importance of cognitive empathy for understanding the relationship between empathy and violence among adolescents, future research should focus on investigating the effects of various facets of cognitive empathy, such as inferences regarding others' emotional states, and inferences regarding others' complex intentions and beliefs. It has been shown that these forms of cognitive empathy had partially distinct neural correlates (Blair, 2006), so it could be helpful to understand which aspects of understanding other person's point of view and emotions contribute to the tendency toward violent behavior.

Apart from the implications for school-based prevention efforts, the results of this study also provide implications for future research. Regardless of the extensive empirical evidence on gender effects on aggression and violence, it seems that all the possible effects of gender have not been explored enough. Determination of moderating gender effects on other important correlates of violent behavior could be one of the directions for future studies.

Conclusions

Results of this study provide a confirmation for the empirical corpus which highlights the importance of the cognitive aspects of empathy in expressing physical and relational violence, while they refute the association between the affective dimension of empathy and violent behavior among adolescents. In addition, this research provides a contribution to the study of the role of gender in violent behavior, by showing that there are no differences between genders in terms of relational violence, and also by showing that the relation between empathy and physical violence is moderated by gender.

	Physical violence	Verbal violence	Relational violence	Affective empathy	Male (n = 400)	Female (n = 245)	t(644)	d
Physical violence	1				4.17	5.41	1.18	2.60	8.09***	0.64
Verbal violence	0.55***	1			5.60	3.52	3.28	2.75	8.82***	0.70
Relational violence	0.55***	0.46***	1		2.82	3.17	2.86	2.99	−0.18	−0.01
Affective empathy	−0.21***	−0.25***	−0.04	1	32.44	6.30	40.40	6.14	−15.72***	−1.24
Cognitive empathy	−0.25***	−0.13**	−0.11**	0.36***	34.55	5.72	37.74	4.32	−7.53***	−0.59

	Physical violence	Verbal violence	Relational violence
Gender	−2.58 (0.43)***	−2.47 (0.45)***	1.95 (0.310)***	−1.93 (0.32)***	0.27 (0.30)	0.33 (0.31)
Cognitive empathy	−1.77 (0.36)***	cov.	−0.19 (0.26)	cov.	−0.81 (0.24)***	cov.
Affective empathy	cov.	−0.09 (0.39)	cov.	−0.54 (0.29)	cov.	−0.07 (0.27)
Gender x Cognitive e.	1.70 (0.71)*	–	0.43 (0.51)	–	0.75 (0.49)	–
Gender x Affective e.	–	0.08 (0.65)	–	0.07 (0.47)	–	−0.03 (0.45)
R ²	0.13***	0.12***	0.12***	0.12***	0.02*	0.02
ΔR² of interaction	0.01*	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Dr. Aleksandar Kavgić for help with English translation.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study is a part of a larger project, which includes validation of the used questionnaire (PVVQ). Validation of PVVQ was performed on the same sample in the article: Dinić, B., Sokolovska, V., Milovanović, I., & Oljača, M. (2014). Oblici i činioci školskog nasilništva i viktimizacije [Forms and factors of peer violence and victimisation]. Zbornik instituta za pedagoška istraživanja [Journal of the Institute for Educational Research], 46(2), 399–424., which was mentioned in the present study. However, except for PVVQ and the same sample, other elements of those two studies are different.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia [grant number #179006 and #179037]; the Provincial Secretariat for Science and Technological Development, Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia (project “Violence in contemporary society: Dispositional and contextual predictors”).

Author biographies

Bojana M. Dinić, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She is currently taking part in several research projects, including ‘Violence in contemporary society: Dispositional and contextual predictors’ (funded by Provincial Secretariat for Science and Technological Development, Goverment of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia). Her major research focuses on the predictors of aggression and violence, as the assessment of different aspects of trait aggression and aggressive behavior.

Jasmina S. Kodžopeljić, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Pholosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She is currently taking part in several research projects, including ‘Violence in contemporary society: Dispositional and contextual predictors’ (funded by Provincial Secretariat for Science and Technological Development, Goverment of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia) and was the Principal Investigator of the project ‘School Without Violence’ (funded by UNICEF Serbia). Her main research interest is educational psychology.

Valentina T. Sokolovska, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She is currently taking part in several research projects, including ‘Sociological aspects region and regionalisation: Comparative aproach’ (funded by Provincial Secretariat for Science and Technological Development, Goverment of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia) and ‘The importance of participation in social networks for adapting to European integration processes’ (funded by Ministry for Education, Science and Technological Development, Republic of Serbia). Her main research interest is statistics and demography as the social relationships and networks.

Ilija Z. Milovanović, MA, is a Teaching Assistant and Phd student at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. He works in the field of educational psychology and his research interests are school violence and behavioral genetics. His major research interest is examination of the effects of environmental and genetic factors to different phenomena in the field of educational psychology.

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	Physical violence		Verbal violence		Relational violence
	B (SE)	B (SE)	B (SE)	B (SE)	B (SE)	B (SE)
Gender	−2.58 (0.43)***	−2.47 (0.45)***	1.95 (0.310)***	−1.93 (0.32)***	0.27 (0.30)	0.33 (0.31)
Cognitive empathy	−1.77 (0.36)***	cov.	−0.19 (0.26)	cov.	−0.81 (0.24)***	cov.
Affective empathy	cov.	−0.09 (0.39)	cov.	−0.54 (0.29)	cov.	−0.07 (0.27)
Gender x Cognitive e.	1.70 (0.71)*	–	0.43 (0.51)	–	0.75 (0.49)	–
Gender x Affective e.	–	0.08 (0.65)	–	0.07 (0.47)	–	−0.03 (0.45)
R ²	0.13***	0.12***	0.12***	0.12***	0.02*	0.02
ΔR² of interaction	0.01*	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00