Emotional Intelligence and Empathy in Aggressors and Victims of School Violence

Abstract

The present study was organized around 2 main objectives: first, to analyze emotional intelligence (EI) both in aggressors and victims of school violence, considering 3 dimensions of EI—emotional attention, emotional clarity, and emotion regulation—and second, to analyze empathy in aggressors and victims of school violence, taking into consideration 2 dimensions—cognitive and affective empathy. Participants were 1,318 Spanish adolescents, aged between 11 and 17 years (47% boys) enrolled in 4 secondary schools, and who completed self-report measures. Analyses of variance were conducted to analyze the data. The results indicated that, regarding EI, victims of school violence scored significantly higher in the dimension of emotional attention, but significantly lower in emotional clarity and emotion regulation; aggressors showed differences only in emotion regulation, with significantly lower scores. With regard to empathy, victims showed less empathetic joy, a subdimension of affective empathy, which indicated that they are, at the moment, unable to feel happiness for others’ successes; aggressors obtained lower scores both in cognitive and affective empathy. These results underscore the importance of managing emotions in the main school violence roles in adolescent students and help us to understand differences between aggressors and victims in the managing of affect.