Emotional Intelligence and Empathy in Aggressors and Victims of School Violence

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. Educational Impact and Implications Statement This study explores emotional intelligence (EI) and empathy in aggressors and victims of school violence. Three elements of EI were considered: attention to emotions, understanding of emotions, and regulation of emotions. Two aspects of empathy were evaluated: understanding the feelings of others (cognitive empathy) and experiencing the feelings of others (affective empathy). In this study, a sample of 1,319 adolescent secondary education students of both sexes voluntarily participated. The results indicated that, regarding EI, victims of school violence pay close attention to their emotions, but fail in the processes of understanding and regulating them so that victims can satisfactorily recover from their negative emotional experience; aggressors also presented difficulties in managing their emotions. With regard to empathy, victims showed less empathetic joy, whereas aggressors scored lower both in cognitive and affective empathy. These results underscore the importance of emotion regulation in the main school violence roles in adolescent studen