Social Anxiety and Aggression in Early Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Roles of Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking

Abstract

Guided by a social information processing perspective, this study examined the unique and interactive contributions of social anxiety and two distinct components of empathy, empathic concern and perspective taking, to subsequent relational and overt aggression in early adolescents. Participants were 485 10- to 14-year old middle school students (54% female; 78% European-American) involved in two waves of a study with one year between each wave. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that higher levels of empathic concern were directly associated with decreases in subsequent relational and overt aggression one year later and buffered the impact of social anxiety on subsequent relational aggression. Although perspective taking did not moderate the impact of social anxiety on either form of aggression, it was a unique predictor of increased relational aggression one year later. Findings call for future research to assess both components of empathy separately as they relate to relational and overt aggression.

The Role of Anger in the Relationship Between Internalising Symptoms and Aggression in Adolescents

“…At the first wave, using a sample of 10-14 year olds, Loukas et al (2005) found significant positive correlations between scores on a 'fear of negative evaluation' scale from a measure of social anxiety, and overt and relational aggression. At the second wave, 1 year later, Batanova and Loukas (2011) found that social anxiety symptoms were prospectively positively related with overt (direct) and relational (indirect) aggression, though only in the context of low empathic concern. Further research is needed to clarify the ways in which internalising symptoms and aggression relate.…”

“…Further to this, adolescence represents a peak risk period for the development of internalising disorders such as anxiety and depression (Costello et al 2011). A growing body of literature suggests that internalising symptoms are associated with anger as well as aggressive behaviour among a variety of samples (Batanova and Loukas 2011;Dutton and Karakanta 2013;Hawkins and Cougle 2011), although studies among adolescent samples are limited. The co-occurrence of internalising symptoms and aggression often presents within clinical settings (Lilienfeld 2003;McConaughy and Skiba 1994) and it is often difficult to determine whether one of the observed symptom clusters is perhaps at the origin of the other.…”

“…Empirical research has shown that anxiety and depression are associated with the emotion of anger as well as aggressive behaviour among children (Erwin et al 2003;Vitaro et al 2002), adolescents (Batanova and Loukas 2011;Fite et al 2010;Marsee et al 2008) and adults (Barret et al 2013;Hawkins and Cougle 2011;Moscovitch et al 2008). The nature of these relationships, however, remains unclear.…”

The role of empathy in preparing teachers to tackle bullying

“…Teachers can create an environment which will nurture the moral development of students within the classroom thus promoting empathy and reducing the likelihood of bullying behaviour (Jevtic, 2014). Batanova and Loukas (2011) find that students who scored high on the 'empathic concern' scale also had low levels of aggression. Davis (1996) explains empathy as:…”

Portuguese juvenile delinquents: An exploratory study from a sample of institutionalized young offenders

“…It is quite consensual that the tendency to show altruism, sympathy, and respect may be determinant in preventing an antisocial trajectory (Batanova & Loukas, 2011;Dodge et al, 2008), whereas lack of social sensitivity, empathy and perspective-taking in social interactions may put individuals at higher risk of engaging in antisocial behaviours (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004;Pechorro et al, 2014). In addition, social skills and antisocial behaviour have an important impact on school achievement.…”