Increasingly, empathy is a topic of discussion and instruction. Often used as a synonym to describe the socially acceptable and friendly behaviors we want to see more of in our society and specifically among adolescents, empathy is being used as a catchall phrase, confusing efforts to teach people how to choose empathetic behaviors. Adolescents…

Prosocial teasing is the positive playful form of relational aggression, and studies have found children engage in playful teasing more often than aggressive teasing. Therefore, understanding the basic characteristics or skills that contribute to the more complex social skill of prosocial teasing is important. The current study focused on the role…

The possibility of inducing value change has attracted interest among scholars and practitioners in developmental and social psychology. This study proposes a new web-based intervention aimed at enhancing the importance adolescents ascribe to social-focused values (i.e., self-transcendence and conservation), which was implemented and evaluated in…

Because school bullying causes short-term and long-term suffering for both victims and perpetrators, many schools want more effective interventions. Traditional, punitive approaches have been shown to exacerbate the problem, but one organization (No Bully) has developed a system that is peer-driven, empathy-building, and target-centered. This…

Purpose: In this study, the hypothesis put forward is that empathetic tendency and respectful behaviour are related to conflict resolution skills and that the variable of respectful behaviour can play a role as a mediating variable between empathetic tendency and conflict resolution skills. Within the scope of the research, it is aimed to test…

A lack of empathy for victimized individuals has been cited as a reason for why bystanders fail to intervene when they witness bullying. However, limited research has addressed how different empathic and compassionate responses could account for diverse bystander behaviors. In this study, we investigated the unique associations of empathic…

Using latent profile analysis, this study refined the traditional defender and outsider roles in bullying research and examined intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual factors associated with subtypes of roles. Participants were 1,373 adolescents (40% girls, M[subscript age]: 14 years) from 54 classrooms in six middle schools. The results…

Public school teachers in Southwest Texas were surveyed regarding important civil behaviors students should practice and prevalent uncivil behaviors they have observed in the classroom. There was consensus across all demographic groups that the most important civil behaviors were the ability to successfully manage conflicts with others and the…

"What If Learning" is a pedagogical approach that allows teachers to deliver traditional content, as prescribed by national curricula, while at the same time promoting character virtues fundamental to Christian ethos. It encourages teachers to present topics from a different perspective, which shapes understanding through the lenses of…

Adolescents' defender and outsider behaviors in classroom bullying situations, which involve various kinds of participant roles, are likely determined by individual characteristics, social status variables, and classroom/school contextual factors operating simultaneously in the peer ecology. Despite increasing attention in anti-bullying…

Traditional school bullying and cyberbullying are growing concerns worldwide. Research has been devoted to understanding the etiology of bullying behaviors. Using a large sample of secondary school adolescents in Hong Kong (N = 1,893), this study explores gender differences in mean levels of traditional school bullying (i.e., physical and verbal…

This 3-year study evaluated the effectiveness of the Second Step-Student Success Through Prevention (SS-SSTP) social-emotional learning program on increasing prosocial behaviors that could serve as protective factors against peer conflict and bullying among students with disabilities. Participants included 123 students with disabilities across 12…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a pilot school-based intervention called CEPIDEA, designed to promote prosocial behavior in early adolescence. The study took place in a middle school located in a small city near Rome. The intervention group included 151 students (52.3% males; M[subscript age] = 12.4), and the control group…

This study examined adolescents' patterns of beliefs about aggression, and how these patterns relate to aggressive and prosocial behavior, and to risk factors associated with aggression. A sample of 477 sixth graders from two urban schools and a school in a nearby county completed measures of beliefs, behavior, and individual, peer and parental…

The "Second Step"[R] violence prevention curriculum was implemented in a large urban school district as part of a comprehensive three-year initiative to impact students at-risk for violence and substance abuse. An outcome evaluation was conducted to assess the intervention's effectiveness on students' attitudes and on behaviors important for…