Development characteristics of empathy and its relationship with aggression in adolescents / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the development characteristics of empathy in adolescents and the relations with aggression.Methods:With multistage stratified random sampling method,15 738 middle school students were selected from 5 provinces across China.The Buss-Warren Aggression Questionnaire Revised in China (BWAQ-RC) and Interactional Reactivity Index (IRI-C)was used to measure adolescents'aggression and empathy.Results:Girls had higher level of empathy than boys (P <0.001).Age and gender were interacted in predicting empathetic con-cern (P <0.001).Perspective taking was significant negative predictor of indirect aggression,physical aggression, hostile and angry (P <0.001),while empathetic concern was significant positive predictor of indirect aggression, verbal aggression,hostile and angry (P <0.001).Empathy was divided into 4 class used the K-Means clustering a-nalysis,namely,low empathy class,high perspective taking class,high empathetic concern class,high perspective taking and empathetic concern class.In contrast to other classes,individuals in low empathy class were more likely to involve in physical aggression (P <0.05),and individuals in high level of perspective taking and empathetic con-cern class were related with less physical aggression and elevated verbal aggression (P <0.05).Individuals in high empathetic concern class exhibited more indirect aggression,hostile and anger than other subgroups (P <0.05). Conclusion:The unbalance development of the two components of empathy may be closely correlated with different conduction of aggressive behaviors.