The associations between reading mind in the eyes abilities, alexithymia, empathy, and bullying behavior in Turkish adolescents

Abstract

Problem The development of any program to reduce bullying is possible with a better understanding of the associated underlying factors with its emergence. This study, therefore, aimed to investigate three different social cognitive abilities: abilities to read minds in the eyes, alexithymic personality traits, and empathy, in association with bullying behaviors in adolescents. Although these factors have been studied separately, our data highlighted their effect, relationship, and interconnectivity. Methods The participants consisted of 351 adolescents (57.8% girls) aged 13–16 years (mean: 14.32 ± 0.73 for girls, 14.38 ± 0.86 for boys). The data used in this cross‐sectional study were collected using self‐reported questionnaires. Pearson's moment product correlation analysis and hierarchical linear regression analysis were performed to evaluate the associations between variables. Findings Bullying behavior levels were higher in male adolescents compared with females. The results indicated that bullying behavior was associated with low levels of reading minds in the eyes abilities, alexithymic personality traits, and low affective empathy levels. Conclusion These findings highlight the critical impact of the poor comprehension of mental states and emotional statuses of other people and low emphatic thinking capacity in the emergence of bullying behaviors among adolescents. Therapeutic interventions focusing on improving these factors may therefore be useful in prevention and management programs for bullying behavior.

Difficulties in facial emotion recognition: taking psychopathic and alexithymic traits into account

“…This is supported by a systematic review [56] that examined twelve studies, ten of which suggested that the deficits in the processing of emotional facial expressions in individuals with high alexithymic traits extended to all emotional categories (including anger, fear, sadness, happiness and neutral stimuli). High alexithymic traits have been linked with deficits in cognitive empathy [35,57] and affective empathy [55,58] while some studies [e.g., 58,59] suggest that high alexithymic traits are associated predominantly with low cognitive empathy, while affective empathy is less affected, indicating more research is needed.…”

“…Both personality traits are suggested to be associated with empathy related deficits, which are thought to result from different impairments during the empathy process [3]. While psychopathic traits are often related with deficits in predominantly affective empathy [40,41], that is documented with a specific deficit in the recognition of distressed facial expressions, alexithymic traits show intact affective empathy [58,59] but deficits with cognitive empathy [35,57] that are presented as a generalized deficit for all emotions. Individuals with alexithymic traits seem to struggle to represent emotional states in themselves, that leads to deficits in correctly identifying emotions in others [56].…”

Psychoeducation Reduces Alexithymia and Modulates Anger Expression in a School Setting

“…It has been argued that a set of skills are impaired in bullying: interpersonal skills, such as empathy and moral disengagement, coping strategies and management of stress, emotional expression and regulation [ 2 ]. Recently, Sen Demirdogen et al [ 3 ] have reported that bullying among Turkish adolescents was significantly associated with lower levels of “reading minds in the eyes”, alexithymia traits as well as lower empathy. In particular, alexithymia, emotional components of alexithymia, as well as anger-expression styles, have been described as associated factors to bullying, cyberbullying, victimization and their perpetration [ 4 , 5 ].…”