Based on the premise that bullies are deficient in empathy or even lack it completely, bullying prevention and intervention programs often include empathy training. These programs are not always as effective as they aim to be, which may be caused by a failure to acknowledge the multidimensional nature of empathy as well as its complex association with involvement in bullying. To provide a clear overview of the research on the association between empathy and involvement in bullying, this article systematically reviews 40 studies on the association of cognitive empathy (24 studies) and affective empathy (38 studies) with four categories of involvement in bullying: bullying, victimization, defending, and bystanding. The results showed that bullying was negatively associated with cognitive and-in particular-affective empathy. Victimization was negatively associated with cognitive empathy but not with affective empathy. Defending was consistently positively associated with both types of empathy. Contradictory findings were observed in bystanding, with studies reporting both negative and positive associations with cognitive empathy, and studies reporting negative and no associations with affective empathy. Together, the findings stress the importance of the distinction between cognitive and affective empathy in involvement in bullying and suggest different intervention strategies for the four types of involvement in bullying.

This study examined the concurrent and longitudinal associations between stability in bullying and victimization, and social adjustment in childhood and adolescence. Participants were 189 girls and 328 boys who were studied in primary school and in secondary school. The mean age of the participants was 11.1 years in primary school and 14.1 years in secondary school. The measures consisted of peer reported social and personal characteristics. Children who bullied in childhood and adolescence were less liked and more disliked in childhood, and more aggressive and disruptive both in childhood and adolescence, than children who bullied only in childhood or adolescence. Children who bullied or who were victimized only in childhood did not differ largely in adolescence from the children that were

Similarities were assessed between target children (mean age, 11.1 years) and their friends and nonfriends, respectively. One target child of each sex (N = 192), along with one same-sex friend and one nonfriend, were selected from 102 participating classrooms. "Guess who" nominations obtained within these classrooms were used to measure prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, shyness / dependency, and sociometric status; selfreports were used to measure depressive symptoms. Children and their friends were more similar to one another than nonfriends across the entire data set-as the participants were rated by their classmates and as their classmates were rated by the participants. Friendship similarities varied from attribute to attribute, being greater in antisocial behavior than in the other domains. Similarities between friends in sociometric status and size of the friendship network were also greater among socially accepted than nonaccepted children.

Mutual antipathies (when two children or adolescents dislike one another) were studied among 2,348 school-age children and 2,768 adolescents to determine incidence, gender and age differences, and implications for social adjustment. The children were more frequently involved than were the adolescents in same-sex antipathies but not mixed-sex ones. Boys were involved more frequently than were girls in same-sex antipathies, but involvement in mixed-sex antipathies was comparable for the two genders. With peer rejection scores used as a covariate, same-sex antipathies were associated with antisocial behavior and social withdrawal among children and adolescents of both genders and, in addition, to emotionality and lack of friendship support among adolescents. Mixed-sex antipathies were related to social adjustment depending on gender: these antipathies were related to antisocial and bullying behavior in boys but not girls; and to nonaggressiveness, victimization, lesser cooperation, shyness, and depression in girls but not boys. Mutual antipathies thus appear to be concomitants of adaptational risk in both childhood and adolescence.

The results indicate that adolescents' relationships with both older and younger siblings are characterized by modeling processes.