Description:

Qinyou Hu (Rice): Breaking Down Bullying: Empathy, Social Networks, and Adolescents 
 
Abstract: This paper examines the formation of a specific non-cognitive skill – empathy – and its role in determining bullying behavior with a focus on social networks. The analysis centers on a parent-directed empathy-fostering intervention, which successfully increased empathy levels and reduced bullying among students. To disentangle the mechanisms underlying these findings, I develop and estimate a structural model of empathy development, network formation, and bullying decisions. The analysis reveals that 32% of the observed reduction in bullying is attributed to empathy-induced alterations in social networks. Policy counterfactuals show that social network information is valuable. Notably, targeting students based on popularity can lead to up to a 7.5% further reduction in bullying compared to targeting students randomly. Moreover, targeting bullies’ friends is more effective than targeting bullies directly. This insight holds promise for refining the efficacy of anti-bullying initiatives, which often focus more on bullies, and highlights the potential of reshaping social networks to mitigate violent behavior among adolescents.