Empathy as a Predictor of Bullying Among Adolescents in Ethiopia

Bullying has existed in schools for so long. Research into the area however is only decades old. Even though empathy is shown to be a significant predictor of antisocial behaviors including bullying empirical evidence on the links of empathy to school bullying is missing from the scientific literature in Ethiopia. The present study examined whether or not and how adolescents' sex and the two dimensions of empathy: perspective taking, and empathic concern predict bullying. Data were drawn from 404 randomly selected primary school students from Bahir Dar city and Debark town, Ethiopia. The perspective taking and empathic concern subscales from Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) were used to measure the two dimensions of empathy. Whereas, bullying was measured using participant role scale taken from Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Osterman, and Kaukiainen (1996). Multiple Linear Regression was used to analyse data. Results showed that the adjusted R2 was .139 suggesting 14% of the variance in bullying is explained by the combined impact of the predictors. It was also determined that adolescent1 sex (β=-.219, t=-4.648, p=.00) perspective taking (β=-.11, t=-2.271, p=.024) and empathic concern (β=-.229, t=-4.727, p=.000) are significant predictors. We concluded that adolescent's sex, perspective taking and empathic concern inhibit bullying behavior. Based on our findings we suggested inter alia that future endeavors to curb bullying should consider the role of empathy.