Low Empathy in Teenagers & Its Effect on Aggression

Delinquency

• Teens with low levels of empathy are more likely to get into fights, commit crimes and end up in juvenile detention or the prison system. A study by researchers at Simon Fraser and Thompson Rivers universities found that incarcerated teens showed less ability to respond with empathy when they watched a video of an emotionally intense situation than teens who were not incarcerated. Although they could verbally express agreement with the idea that people ought to be empathetic, they showed less ability to actually feel it and tended to respond with anger and hostility in situations where other teens would show empathy.

Aggression and Rejection

• Low levels of empathy were correlated with high rates of both verbal and physical aggression in a 2004 study of boys and girls in a Korean middle school, published in the "Korean Journal of Child Studies," shared on the University of Nebraska website. The study found that aggressive teens with low empathy tended to have less support from their peers. Similarly, the Fraser/Thompson Rivers study on delinquency noted that aggressive teens had often been socially rejected as children due to their aggressive behavior. The authors of the study suggest that peer rejection led aggressive teens to spend time only with other aggressive teens, causing them to get in more and more trouble.

Empathy and Bullying

• Not all forms of aggression can be described as bullying behavior, since an aggressive person may be trying to avoid becoming a victim rather than trying to victimize others. The aforementioned delinquency study described two distinct types of aggressive teens. One type interpreted almost any socially ambiguous situation as a potential threat and responded with inappropriate but essentially defensive aggression. The other type actively sought to use, coerce and manipulate others. Both groups showed low empathy for others, but the behavior of the second group would more accurately be described as bullying. A 2009 study published in the "Humanity and Social Sciences Journal," a resource of the International Digital Organization for Scientific Information, found a correlation between bullying behavior and low levels of empathy.

Low Empathy, High Aggession

• According to the researchers of the aforementioned delinquency study, all of the incarcerated teens they interviewed had experienced abuse and harsh verbal criticism at home while very few of the non-incarcerated teens reported similar experiences. Empathy for others was neither encouraged nor rewarded in their upbringing, but they did experience some success in using aggression to either protect themselves from coercion or to coerce others. These experiences convinced them that aggression was an effective way to interact with other people. While they could understand the value of empathy in an abstract sense, they had trouble feeling genuine empathy for others. In situations where other teens would feel sad and try to offer emotional support, they would lash out in anger as if threatened.