An Empathy Training for Sensitizing Adolescents for Cyberbullying on Social Media: A Cross-National Study

Abstract Young people worldwide use social media. Besides the benefits, such as communication, entertainment, or social support, users also have to deal with negative incidents, such as cyberbullying and its serious consequences. One key factor in mitigating cyberbullying is empathy. Therefore, we developed an empathy training for adolescents, which is led by a virtual learning companion in a social media-like environment and includes direct conversations between the user and the virtual learning companion as well as a video explicating the concept of empathy. This empathy training shall contribute to decreasing users’ bullying intentions and increasing their empathy. Since previous research shows that social media use and cyberbullying are linked to country-specific factors, we evaluated the empathy training in a cross-national experimental study with N = 332 participants from Brazil, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Data were collected via surveys during workshops in schools. Among others, participants answered questions regarding their cyberbullying intentions, levels of cognitive and affective empathy, intentions to help a victim of cyberbullying, and perceived support of the measure. Results show neither decreased bullying intentions nor increased empathy after empathy training. However, cross-national differences were found. Participants’ intentions to bully were significantly higher in Spain and Brazil than in Germany. Furthermore, in the current study, cognitive and affective empathy was significantly higher in the Italian sample than in the German sample. Possibilities for improving the empathy training and the role of cross-national differences are discussed.