Empathy, guilt, and gender: A comparison of two measures of guilt

Silfver-Kuhalampi, Mia; Helkama, Klaus

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9450.2007.00578.x

Cited by 33 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…Consistent with previous research, girls had higher mean scores on both affective and cognitive empathy compared to boys, but the magnitude of the difference was greater for affective empathy [21]. In a separate but related body of empathy research, researchers found that moral judgment of boys was more directly based on perspective-taking, a cognitive aspect of empathy, compared to moral judgment of girls [25]. Even though it could be argued that low affective empathy is the key variable contributing to offline bullying behavior [12], cyberbullying has similarities with indirect bullying which has links with cognitive empathy.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…Perspective-taking is a central part of Kohlberg's [24] cognitive-developmental theory of moral judgment. Interestingly, Silfver and Helkama [25] found that for adolescent boys, cognitive perspective taking was a stronger predictor of guilt than for girls. This finding was in line with previous research showing that moral judgment of boys was more directly based on cognition compared to girls [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…At low affective empathy, those with low cognitive empathy would score higher on cyberbullying than those with high cognitive empathy, and we expected this relationship to hold across gender. However, at high affective empathy, gender differences were anticipated, based on Jolliffe and Farrington's [12,21] prior work and the integrated body of theoretical and empirical research from empathy, perspective-taking and moral judgment [23,25,26]. At high affective empathy, it is likely that we continue to be able to differentiate boys low and high on cognitive empathy, with low cognitive empathy being associated with higher levels of cyberbullying, but high and low cognitive empathy would likely result in similar levels of cyberbullying for girls.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: The Role of Affective and Cognitive Empathy, and Gender

Ang

Goh

2010

Child Psychiatry Hum Dev

459

308

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The purpose of the study was to examine the association between affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and gender on cyberbullying among adolescents. Participants were 396 adolescents from Singapore with age ranging from 12 to 18 years. Adolescents responded to a survey with scales measuring both affective and cognitive empathy, and cyberbullying behavior. A three-step hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used with cyberbullying scores as the dependent variable. Gender was dummy coded and both affective and cognitive empathy were centered using the sample mean prior to creating interaction terms and entering them into the regression equations. The testing, probing and interpretation of interaction effects followed established statistical procedures. Results from hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated a significant three-way interaction. At low affective empathy, both boys and girls who also had low cognitive empathy had higher scores on cyberbullying than those who had high cognitive empathy. This pattern of results was similarly found for boys at high affective empathy. However, for girls, high or low levels of cognitive empathy resulted in similar levels of cyberbullying. Implications of these findings include the need for empathy training and the importance of positive caregiver-child relationships in reducing cyberbullying behavior among adolescents.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: The Role of Affective and Cognitive Empathy, and Gender

Ang

Goh

2010

Child Psychiatry Hum Dev

459

308

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Like empathy, sympathy also has been found to be positively associated with prosocial behavior (for reviews, see Eisenberg et al, 2006Eisenberg et al, , 2010Hoffman, 2000) and negatively associated with aggression (Carlo et al, 2010;MacEvoy & Leff, 2012). Furthermore, previous research with children and adolescents has shown that guilt is negatively related to aggression (Roos, Salmivalli, & Hodges, 2011), bullying (Menesini et al, 2003;Perren, Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, Malti, & Hymel, 2012), and antisocial behavior (Lotze, Ravindran, & Myers, 2010) and positively associated with empathy (Hoffman, 2000;Silfver & Helkama, 2007) and prosocial behavior (Olthof, 2012). Hence, it is reasonable to assume that moral emotions as an index of empathy, sympathy, and guilt have an impact on students' behavior in bullying situations.…”

Section: Moral Emotionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unique and Interactive Effects of Moral Emotions and Moral Disengagement on Bullying and Defending among School Children

Thornberg

Pozzoli

Gini

et al. 2015

The Elementary School Journal

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“…Empathetic people, in contrast, tend to feel for the victim and suffer more readily if they see that others are hurt (Hoffmann, 2000). Consequently, empathetic people are more prone to feeling guilty (Hoffmann, 1998(Hoffmann, , 2000Silfver & Helkama, 2007;Tangney et al, 2007), especially if they are involved in interpersonal violence (Thompson & Hoffman, 1980). Likewise, research in the domain of television and movies suggests that more empathetic users feel more sympathetic towards victims of violence (e.g., Raney, 2002), and that users RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 9 dislike violence directed towards characters they feel empathetic with (Zillmann, 1991).…”

Section: User-factor Influencing Guilt Responses: Trait Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

Hartmann¹,

Toz²,

Brandon³

2010

Media Psychology

109

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Many avid gamers discount violent conduct in video games as morally insignificant as "it is just a game". However, recent debates among users, regarding video games featuring inappropriate forms of virtual violence, suggest a more complex truth. Two experiments (N 1 = 49, N 2 = 80) examined users' guilt responses in order to explore the moral significance of virtual violence. In both studies, justification of virtual violence and users' trait empathy determined guilt in a structurally similar way to real-world scenarios: people felt guiltier if they engaged in unjustified virtual violence, especially if they were empathetic players. These results show that video games are capable of inducing affective moral responses in users. Accordingly, virtual violence may be considered morally significant action.Keywords: violence, video games, guilt, empathy, justification, morality (Bartle, 2008).Virtual violence may be defined as any behavior intended to do harm to another video game character, who is motivated to avoid the harm-doing (Anderson et al., 2008;Baron & Richardson, 1994). Shooting virtual characters for example, in first-person shooter video games, provides a typical example of virtual violence. While many studies have shown that virtual violence depicted in video games increases aggression in users (Anderson et al., 2010), surprisingly little is known about how users perceive and experience virtual violence themselves (e.g., Scharrer & Leone, 2006, Young & Whitty, 2010.Violent video games are designed for entertainment purposes. Consequently, regular violent game players do not typically feel as though they are doing something wrong when they shoot virtual characters. A frequent argument put forward by avid gamers is that they are well aware that the violence depicted in video games "is not real" (Ladas, 2002). For example, Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Vorderer, and Hartmann (2006, see also Whitty, Young, & Goodings, in press) asked avid gamers how they experience virtual violence personally. The majority of players replied that they enjoyed virtual violence as they believe that shooting virtual characters is "just a game" (comparable to chess) and has "nothing to do with killing". This suggests that players maintain a psychologically detached and unaffected stance when playing violent games and that virtual violence is too artificial to be considered morally significant and thus trigger any moral response in the user.RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 2 However, Klimmt et al.'s (2006) study suggests that users may also perceive and judge virtual violence in a moral way. In their study, a number of players indicated that they would find it disturbing if they accidentally shot a child, for example, or if painful injuries were depicted in the video game. Related discussion of "inappropriate" virtual violence also exists in the video game community. Many video game-related online blogs and forums recently featured heated debate regarding a mission included in the popular online-role-playing game "...

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Empathy, guilt, and gender: A comparison of two measures of guilt

Cited by 33 publications

References 30 publications

Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: The Role of Affective and Cognitive Empathy, and Gender

Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: The Role of Affective and Cognitive Empathy, and Gender

Unique and Interactive Effects of Moral Emotions and Moral Disengagement on Bullying and Defending among School Children

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

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