Document [original]

International Journal of Psychology

International Journal of Psychology, 2020

Vol. 55, No. 5, 769–778, DOI: 10.1002/ijop.12700

The association between in-class cultural diversity with

empathy and bullying in adolescence: A multilevel

mediation analysis

Anja Schultze-Krumbholz1, Angela Ittel1, and Herbert Scheithauer2

1Department of Educational Psychology, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Little is known about the associations between cultural class composition, teacher support for diversity (TSD), cognitive

and affective empathy, and bullying and victimisation. Research shows that empathy is negatively associated with

bullying and victimisation; and support for diversity and classroom cultural diversity are positively linked to social skills.

The present study examines whether cultural diversity and perceived TSD are protective factors against bullying and

victimisation, either directly or mediated by empathy. Participants were 897 students from Grades 7 to 10 (Mage =13.45,

SDage =1.07, 51.3% girls, 46.7% boys) in 36 classes. Multilevel mediation analyses were conducted. Age and gender

were controlled for. More perceived TSD and affective empathy were associated with less bullying. Moreover, the effect

of perceived TSD on bullying was partly indirect through affective empathy. Victimisation was not predicted by the study

variables. The class level showed no effects. Bullying and victimisation are complex phenomena, which seem to be linked

more to individual than to class characteristics. The result that higher perceived TSD was linked to empathy and bullying

provides a promising starting point for measures of competence enhancement and bullying prevention.

Keywords: Cultural diversity; Teacher support for contact and pluralism; Bullying; Empathy; Adolescence.

With past and recent increases in migration to Germany,

culturally diverse compositions of school classes and

teacher support for diversity (TSD) might be promising

protective factors against bullying perpetration and bully-

ing victimisation in school, possibly through enhancing

key competences such as cognitive and affective empa-

thy, which are known to protect against bullying and

victimisation.

According to the 2015 Ageing report of the Euro-

pean Commission, migration to Europe has been con-

stantly increasing since around 2000 and will continue

doing so for the next 20 years (European Commission,

2015). In 2015, approximately 17.1 million people with

a migrant background resided in Germany, with every

Correspondence should be addressed to Anja Schultze-Krumbholz, Department of Educational Psychology, Technische Universität Berlin, Institute

of Education, MAR 2-6 Marchstr. 23, 10587 Berlin, Germany. (E-mail: [email protected]).

This research was supported by a research grant from the DAPHNE III program to combat violence against children, young persons and women of the

European Commission (Action Number: JLS/2008/DAP3/AG/1211-30-CE-0311025/00-69; project title “Cyberbullying in Adolescence: Investigation

and Intervention in Six European Countries” granted to the University of Bologna, Italy). The views expressed in this article are ours and do not

represent the granting agency. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the

institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent

was obtained from parents of participants younger than 14 years; assent was obtained from adolescents. A.S.K. conducted the analyses and wrote the

manuscript with support from A.I. and H.S. A.I. encouraged A.S.K. to examine cultural diversity and cultural pluralism and contributed to the formation

of the research question. A.I. and H.S. contributed to the final version of the manuscript. H.S. supervised the project.

third child or adolescent between 5 and 15 years old

having a migrant background (Statistisches Bundesamt,

2017). This increasingly provides students with opportu-

nities for and instances of inter-ethnic contact. Accord-

ing to Allport’s contact hypothesis (1954) increased con-

tact between different groups can reduce prejudice and

inter-group rejection. This in turn implies that forms of

peer rejection like bullying behaviour and bullying expe-

riences should decrease. Furthermore, since interpersonal

contact exposes people to other’s cognitions, perceptions,

attitudes and emotions, higher intergroup contact might

foster social–emotional competences such as empathy,

which has been shown to be a protective factor against

bullying.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

770 SCHULTZE-KRUMBHOLZ, ITTEL, SCHEITHAUER

Bullying and victimisation in school

Students are embedded in the social context of the class-

room, where they spend a significant amount of their

time and, in the case of Germany, in relatively stable

units until 10th grade. Here they are exposed to differ-

ent beliefs, norms and attitudes and the peers, and partly

the teachers in the function of role models, determine the

normative beliefs about acceptable and non-acceptable

behaviour. However, students cannot choose the mem-

bers of this social group by personal preference. Instead,

the members are allocated to a classroom by the institu-

tion’s administration. This increases the risk of bullying

and victimisation.

Bullying is understood as a subtype of aggression,

which repeatedly and intentionally targets persons of

lesser power than the perpetrator(s) and can manifest

itself in physical (i.e. hitting, destroying personal items),

verbal (insulting, threatening) or relational (excluding,

destroying friendships) forms. The PISA 2015 sub-study

on students’ well-being found that 15.7% of students

in Germany are bullied at least a few times a month

(Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Devel-

opment [OECD], 2017). Bullying and victimisation

are associated with depression, anxiety, self-esteem,

health problems, school absenteeism, and low school

achievement, among others (Kowalski & Limber, 2013).

Research has also shown that the dividing lines between a

subgroup of aggressive victims and bullies are permeable

over time (Hanish & Guerra, 2004) and that victimisation

and bullying may even co-occur. These two phenomena

should therefore not be viewed separately.

Cultural diversity and TSD as potential

protective factors

With increasing cultural diversity in in-class settings, it

is becoming more and more important to understand the

links to social behaviour and social–emotional experi-

ences in classroom interactions. In the past, studies on

cultural diversity have mainly focused on educational out-

comes, but much less on social behaviour and experi-

ences. As compared to the proportion of students with

migrant background in classes, cultural diversity can be

an indicator of majorities and minorities and with it an

indicator of power imbalance (Juvonen, Nishina, & Gra-

ham, 2006), which is one of the defining characteristics

of bullying. High cultural diversity (as indicated by a

diversity index) implies a lack of numerical majority, low

cultural diversity a numerical majority of one or more eth-

nic groups. Juvonen et al. (2006) found that more cultural

diversity in schools was related to lower levels of bully-

ing victimisation, leading them to conclude that power

relations were more balanced in more ethnically diverse

settings. It was the first study to show protective effects

of greater cultural diversity against bullying and victim-

isation and supported the imbalance of power hypothe-

sis (Graham, 2006), which explains the power of a spe-

cific group in the school context with its relative num-

ber of members and is especially applicable to ethnic

contexts.

Other, inconsistent, results regarding the association

of cultural diversity with bullying finding no relationship

(e.g. Stefanek, Strohmeier, van de Schoot, & Spiel, 2011)

or finding cultural diversity to be a risk factor for bully-

ing and victimisation (e.g. Tolsma, van Deurzen, Stark,

& Veenstra, 2013) might indicate that cultural diversity

may not by itself be sufficient to promote tolerance and

social competences. Since cultural diversity can hardly

be actively influenced by school staff, the question arises

what teachers can do to foster positive effects of cul-

tural diversity on bullying and victimisation. Class or

school factors, such as (perceived) TSD, may be impor-

tant in this regard (Thijs & Verkuyten, 2014). Support

for diversity encompasses teaching about topics of diver-

sity as well as creating a climate appreciative of diversity

(Schachner, Noack, Van de Vijver, & Eckstein, 2016) and

supporting contact. It has been associated with better aca-

demic, behavioural and social–emotional adjustment in

minority students and is therefore an important dimension

of climate (Brand, Felner, Shim, Seitsinger, & Dumas,

2003). Verkuyten and Thijs (2013) propose that multi-

cultural education (i.e. support for diversity) in a class

might be a reason for the substantial differences between

classrooms regarding interethnic attitudes, which in turn

influence ethnic-based peer victimisation and discrimina-

tion. To the best of our knowledge, TSD has not explic-

itly been examined in regards to bullying. However, stud-

ies on related topics such as the one by Schwarzenthal,

Schachner, van de Vijver, and Juang (2018), which exam-

ined effects on perceived ethnic discrimination through

classmates, found that while support for equality and

positive contact was associated with less perceived eth-

nic discrimination, support for cultural pluralism was

associated with more perceived ethnic discrimination.

TSD in the current study taps into both contact and

pluralism and we study effects on general bullying and

victimisation as opposed to ethnic discrimination specif-

ically. We therefore expect that more TSD will be asso-

ciated with less bullying and victimisation. TSD can

be conceived as operationalising one of the four condi-

tions specified by Allport (1954) for successful or opti-

mal intergroup contact, namely the condition of authority

support.

Cognitive and affective empathy as protective

factors

Cultural diversity and TSD might show protective effects

on bullying and victimisation at the individual level

CULTURAL DIVERSITY, EMPATHY AND BULLYING 771

because reported contact between ethnic groups has been

linked to increased cognitive and affective empathy in

individuals by numerous studies (see Pettigrew, Tropp,

Wagner, & Christ, 2011, for a review). Since TSD fos-

ters learning about other cultures, it should also promote

understanding and feeling the emotions (affective empa-

thy) of people of other cultures and in general, as well as

taking their perspectives (cognitive empathy). Todd and

Galinsky (2012, p. 1397) conclude from their results that

multiculturalism, which focuses both on differences and

similarities may be able to promote more positive inter-

group sentiments and perspective-taking.

Both affective and cognitive empathy are associated

with prosocial and inhibit anti-social behaviour (e.g.

Eisenberg, Eggum, & Di Giunta, 2010). While the lit-

erature on the link between cognitive empathy and bul-

lying finds either no association or a negative one (van

Noorden, Haselager, Cillessen, & Bukowski, 2015), the

negative association of bullying with affective empathy

is quite consistent across studies (Zych, Ttofi, & Farring-

ton, 2019, for a review). For victimisation, a clear pattern

has not yet become apparent: some studies find significant

links to affective empathy while others do not. The same

was shown for the relation with cognitive empathy (Zych

et al., 2019, for a review). Our examination of this link is

therefore of exploratory nature.

THE PRESENT STUDY

Based on the contact hypothesis by Allport (1954) and

the imbalance of power hypothesis by Graham (2006),

the present study examines whether there is a protective

effect of in-class cultural diversity and perceived TSD

on bullying and victimisation, and whether this effect

is mediated by individual social competences, that is,

cognitive and affective empathy. In detail, we expected:

H1. Cultural diversity on the class level to predict lower

rates of victimisation and bullying on the individual level.

H2. Cultural diversity on the class level to predict empathy

on the individual level and empathy to mediate an effect on

victimisation and bullying.

H3. Perceived TSD on the individual as well as on the class

level to predict lower rates of victimisation and bullying on

the individual level.

H4. Perceived TSD on the individual level as well as on the

class level to predict empathy on the individual level and

empathy to mediate an effect on victimisation and bullying.

We did not have specific assumptions on the direction

of the effect of empathy on victimisation. Due to incon-

sistent findings in prior research, research questions per-

taining to this effect were exploratory.

We conducted multilevel mediation analyses with

classroom cultural diversity and perceived TSD as

independent variables at Level 2 (L2; classroom level),

cognitive and affective empathy as independent variables

at Level 1 (L1; individual level), and bullying and victim-

isation, separately, as dependent variable at L1, resulting

ina2→1→1 mediation model.

METHOD

Participants

The present data were collected as part of a more compre-

hensive 3-wave evaluation study of a school-based inter-

vention program. For the present analyses, only the data

from the first wave (baseline assessment) were used to

prevent distortions caused by intervention effects. Par-

ticipants were initially 897 seventh to tenth grade stu-

dents from 36 classes in five schools in a major Ger-

man city (1 vocational track high school, 4 academic

track high schools). Students were on average 13.45 years

old (SDage =1.07, range: 11–17 years) and 51.3% were

female, 46.7% were male and 2.0% did not indicate their

gender. 844 (missing rate =5.9%) adolescents provided

complete data on all indicators included in the bullying

analysis and 853 (missing rate =4.9%) provided com-

plete data for the victimisation analyses.

Procedure

In line with the local regulations for empirical studies

in schools, active parental consent was collected for stu-

dents younger than 14 years and active student consent

was collected for all participating students. Standard-

ised self-report paper-and-pencil questionnaires were dis-

tributed and completed during regular school lessons. A

member of the research team was present during data

assessment in each class, was available for questions and

collected the questionnaires. All participants were guar-

anteed anonymity and voluntariness. The procedure was

approved by the responsible school administration of the

federate state, where data collection took place.

Measures

A multitude of indicators was assessed in the overall

study using a questionnaire. In the present study, cognitive

and affective empathy on the individual level are used to

predict individual bullying and victimisation, and cultural

diversity and perceived TSD are used to examine direct

effects as well as indirect effects on individual bullying

and victimisation via individual cognitive and affective

empathy. Gender and age were used as control variables

on the individual level.

772 SCHULTZE-KRUMBHOLZ, ITTEL, SCHEITHAUER

Student-level measures

Participants’ sex, grade, age in years, country of birth

and language spoken with the parents were assessed as

demographics.

Students’ migrant background (which is the basis

of the cultural diversity index on L2) was determined

through the country of birth of the students combined

with the language spoken with the parents. Students who

were born in a country other than Germany and those

who mostly or only speak a language other than German

with their parents were categorised as having a migrant

background. Answers on country and language were cat-

egorised into 12 different cultural regions (cf. Jordan,

2005; Stefanek et al., 2011). This approach was chosen

due to data protection regulations.

Bullying and victimisation in the offline context were

measured with the bullying and victimisation scales of the

European Cyberbullying Intervention Project Question-

naire (ECIPQ; Brighi et al., 2012). Each scale comprised

seven items rated on 5-point answer scales (1 never to 5

more than once a week), for example, “I said mean things

to someone or insulted them” and “Someone said mean

things to me or insulted me”; Cronbach’s α=.80 for bul-

lying and α=.77 for victimisation, respectively.

Cognitive empathy was assessed with the 8-item

perspective-taking subscale of the Interpersonal Reactiv-

ity Index (German translation: Lamsfuss, Silbereisen, &

Boehnke, 1992) using a 5-point answer scale (1 never true

to 5 almost always true), Cronbach’s α=.85. An example

is “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by

imagining how things look from their perspective.”

Affective empathy was operationalised as adolescents’

tendency to show affective empathy in a given situation.

This was assessed by presenting a stimulus situation from

the Sympathy Reactivity Questionnaire (Volland, Ulich,

Kienbaum, & Hölzle, 2008), which we adapted for the

school context: “Imagine, during break time you see a

person in the school yard who is all alone and is being

excluded from all groups. The person is obviously lonely.

What would you think?”. After reading this stimulus sit-

uation, adolescents answered questions about how they

would react emotionally on a 6-point scale (1 not at all

true to 6 completely true), for example, “Because I see

that the person is lonely I am sad myself.”. Initially, seven

items were assessed, but only four (being touched by the

situation, caring about whether the person is doing better

soon, being sad oneself about the situation, and worrying

about the person) were included into scale computation

to include only the affective components in the analy-

ses, Cronbach’s α=.81. Negatively worded items were

reverse coded.

Perceived TSD was assessed using the 4-item

support-for-cultural-pluralism subscale of the Inven-

tory of School Climate—Student (ISC-S; Brand et al.,

2003) with a 4-point answer scale (1 never to 4 often),

for example “You get to do something which helps you

learn about students of different races and cultures at

your school.”, Cronbach’s α=.67. Since it is not very

common nor socially acceptable to use the term “race” in

Germany, this word was replaced by “origin.”

Class-level measures

To assess diversity, we used the proportion of ethnic

minority students for each class as well as a more dif-

ferentiated diversity measure by computing the diversity

index (Simpson, 1949), which incorporates the number of

different cultural or ethnic groups in the class with the rel-

ative size of each cultural or ethnic group (Juvonen et al.,

2006).

DC=1−

∑

i=1

In this formula for the diversity index, DCstands for

the cultural diversity of the class and pirepresents the pro-

portion of ethnic or cultural group iin the class, which is

then squared and summed across ggroups within a class.

The index ranges from 0 to 1 with larger scores indicat-

ing greater diversity. We chose this approach to incorpo-

rate both approaches to research on the effect of the eth-

nic make-up of a class: a very simple majority-minority

distinction versus a differentiated measure taking into

account different ethnic backgrounds.

To assess perceived TSD on class level, the mean

score of students’ answers on the cultural pluralism scale

described in the individual measures was computed for

each class.

Data analysis

We computed 2-1-1 multilevel mediation models sepa-

rately for bullying and victimisation to take into account

the nested structure of the data, but also to address our

research questions regarding class-level influences (level

2, L2, between) and indirect effects via individual-level

(level 1, L1, within) predictors. A combined model

for bullying and victimisation was not implemented

because the number of parameters exceeded the number

of level-2 units resulting in estimation problems. For the

same reason manifest models were chosen. The baseline

model did not contain any predictors, but was used to

estimate the intra-class correlations and the proportion

of variance at the different levels. The second model was

a random-intercepts model estimating class- and indi-

vidual direct and indirect effects on individual cognitive

and affective empathy, and bullying or victimisation,

respectively (see Figure 1). Individual perceived TSD

used on the within-level was centred around the group

mean. Independent variables used on the between-level

were centred around their grand mean before being

CULTURAL DIVERSITY, EMPATHY AND BULLYING 773

Bullying /

Victimization

Cognitive

empathy

Affective

empathy

Cultural

diversity

Between

Within

Perceived

teacher

support for

diversity

Perceived

teacher

support for

diversity

Cognitive

empathy

Affective

empathy

Bullying /

Victimization

Figure 1. Overview of the second analytical (random-intercepts-) models. Analyses were carried out separately for the dependent variables bullying

and victimisation.

entered into the prediction (Enders & Tofighi, 2007).

Due to skewness of some of the variables, the maximum

likelihood robust (MLR) estimator was used. Gender and

age were included as control variables at the individual

level. Both students without and with migrant back-

ground were included in the analyses. The multilevel

modelling was conducted with Mplus 8 (Muthén &

Muthén, 1998–2017).

RESULTS

Descriptive results

Based on self-reports, 82.1% of the students were cate-

gorised as not having a migrant background, 16.3% indi-

cated a migrant background, and 1.7% of the adoles-

cents did not provide information on this. The propor-

tion of students with migrant background in the class

ranged from 0 to 72.2%. The cultural regions represented

most frequently in the overall sample were Turkey/Arab

countries/Middle East (3.9%), Western Europe (3.3%),

Central Europe including Poland (2.1%), and Eastern

Europe/Russia (1.9%).

Mean scores (see Table 1) show that bullying and

victimisation are not highly prevalent on average in the

present sample given that the means range between 0.3

and 0.4, while scores of up to 4 were possible. Also, while

a diversity index of 1 was theoretically possible, the mean

diversity score was only 0.25 and the empirical range was

from 0 to 0.63. Due to skewness of the data on some

of the variables, correlations between the study variables

on L1 (Table 2) and L2 (Table 3) were computed using

TABLE 1

Means and standard deviations of study variables (n=846)

Variable M SD Range

L1 (Individual)

Bullying 0.34 0.51 0–4

Victimisation 0.40 0.52 0–4

Cognitive empathy 3.19 0.69 1–5

Affective empathy 3.59 1.13 1–6

Perceived TSD 2.98 0.62 1–4

L2 (class)

Cultural diversity 0.25 0.16 0–1

Perceived TSD 2.99 0.19 1–4

Note: Range refers to the potential answer range provided by the number

of answer categories.

Kendall’s Tau. On L1, bullying is significantly correlated

with all the variables and victimisation is correlated with

the individual perception of TSD and bullying. On L2,

the only significant correlation is between bullying and

victimisation.

Model 1—Baseline model

Analysis of the respective baseline models showed that

for bullying the ICC was .046 (σ2=0.264, p<.001;

τ00 =0.013, p=.25), indicating that 4.6% of the vari-

ance were due to differences between classes while 95.4%

could be ascribed to individual differences. For victimisa-

tion, the ICC was .026 (σ2=0.261, p<.001; τ00 =0.007,

p=.05), meaning that 2.6% of the variance were on

the class level while 97.4% of the variance in victimisa-

tion was due to individual differences. Thus, most of the

774 SCHULTZE-KRUMBHOLZ, ITTEL, SCHEITHAUER

TABLE 2

Individual level (L1) bivariate correlations (n=843)

Variable 1 2 3 4 5

1. Bullying —

2. Victimisation .376*** —

3. Cognitive empathy −.145*** −.034 —

4. Affective empathy −.207*** −.041 .313*** —

5. Perceived TSD −.112*** −.070** .155*** .172*** —

Note: Correlation coefficients are Kendall–Tau-b.

*p<.05. ∗∗ p<.01. ∗∗∗ p<.001.

TABLE 3

Classroom level (L2) bivariate correlations (n=36)

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Cultural diversity —

2. Perceived TSD .163 —

3. Bullying .027 −.081 —

4. Victimisation .032 .029 .326** —

5. Cognitive empathy −.139 .097 −.134 −.125 —

6. Affective empathy −.109 .194 −.214 −.010 .071 —

Note: Correlation coefficients are Kendall–Tau-b.

*p<.05. ∗∗ p<.01. ***p<.001.

variance in bullying and victimisation was found between

students, not between classes. We also computed the

design effects (Kish, 1965). Based on a simulation study

Lai and Kwok (2015) recommend conducting multilevel

modelling when the design effect is larger than 1.1 or

when researchers are interested in L2 effects. The design

effects were 2.09 for bullying and 1.62 for victimisation.

Model 2—Random intercepts

On the individual level, showing lower affective empathy

scores than the overall sample was associated with higher

levels of bullying behaviour (B=−0.104, p<.001; see

Table 4). Moreover, students who perceived more TSD

reported less bullying (B=−0.081, p<.05; H3). Higher

levels of perceived TSD were associated with more

cognitive (B=0.245, p<.001) and affective empathy

(B=0.378, p<.001) (H4). A significant negative indi-

rect effect was found for perceived TSD on bullying via

affective empathy (B=−0.039, p<.01) (H4). The con-

trol variables age and gender were significant. On the

class level, perceived TSD significantly predicted lower

levels of individual level cognitive empathy (B=−0.307,

p<.05; H4), but not bullying (H3). No other direct or

indirect effects were found on the class level. The model

explained approximately 13% of the variance on L1 and

43% of the variance on L2.

Regarding victimisation, there was no association with

any type of empathy (Bcognitive =−0.007, p>.05 and

Baffective =−0.010, p>.05, respectively). As in the model

for bullying, perceived TSD was positively linked to

cognitive (B=0.243, p<.001) and affective empathy

(B=0.369, p<.001) (H4). The control variables age and

gender were significant. Again, on the class level, cul-

tural diversity was negatively linked to cognitive empathy

(B=−0.311, p<.05; H2). Otherwise, there were no sig-

nificant direct or indirect effects. The model explained

approximately 4% of the variance on L1 and 27% of the

variance on L2. An overview of the regression coefficients

and standard errors can be found in Table 4.

DISCUSSION

In this study, we examined the link of culturally diverse

class compositions and perceived TSD with bullying and

victimisation. We assumed that this might be mediated by

empathy, that is, cultural diversity and TSD are negatively

linked to bullying and victimisation by being positively

linked to empathy, which has been shown to be a protec-

tive factor against bullying and victimisation.

As expected, we found that students who perceived

more TSD were less likely to bully others (H3). These

results indicate that TSD in a class is associated with

less engagement in negative peer interactions. Support-

ing joint activities and learning about other cultures

might foster contact between students with and without

migrant background and in line with the contact hypoth-

esis (Allport, 1954) might lead to less bullying perpe-

tration and more intercultural competence (Schwarzen-

thal, Schachner, Juang, & van de Vijver, 2019). Class-

room diversity and TSD can be viewed as two aspects

of contact. Further, TSD represents the dimension of

CULTURAL DIVERSITY, EMPATHY AND BULLYING 775

TABLE 4

Model 2 (random intercept) individual and class level variables predicting bullying and victimisation

Bullying Victimisation

BSEBSE

Individual variables (L1) (n=876)

Direct effects

Cognitive empathy −0.031 0.030 0.007 0.029

Affective empathy −0.104*** 0.022 −0.010 0.017

Perceived teacher support for diversity −0.081* 0.039 −0.042 0.028

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Cognitive empathy 0.245*** 0.057 0.243*** 0.056

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Affective empathy 0.378*** 0.068 0.369*** 0.066

Cognitive empathy ↔Affective empathy 0.257*** 0.024 0.257*** 0.024

Indirect effects

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Cognitive

empathy →Bullying/Victimisation

−0.008 0.008 0.002 0.007

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Affective

empathy →Bullying/Victimisation

−0.039** 0.012 −0.004 0.006

Class variables (L2) (n=36)

Direct effects

Cultural diversity 0.403 0.666 0.081 0.495

Perceived teacher support for diversity −0.147 0.410 −0.047 0.237

Cultural diversity →Cognitive empathy −0.307* 0.125 −0.311* 0.128

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Cognitive empathy 0.139 0.175 0.135 0.172

Cultural diversity →Affective empathy −0.332 0.286 −0.334 0.285

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Affective empathy 0.147 0.223 0.129 0.226

Indirect effects

Cultural diversity →Cognitive empathy →Bullying/Victimisation −0.258 0.412 −0.040 0.274

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Cognitive

empathy →Bullying/Victimisation

0.117 0.260 0.017 0.122

Cultural diversity →Affective empathy →Bullying/Victimisation −0.128 0.327 0.055 0.216

Perceived teacher support for diversity →Affective

empathy →Bullying/Victimisation

0.057 0.169 −0.021 0.100

R2for bullying/victimisation

L1 0.131*** 0.044**

L2 0.397 0.164

Model fit CFI =1.00, TLI =1.00, CFI =1.00, TLI =1.00,

RMSEA =0.00 RMSEA =0.00

Note: Reported regression coefficients are unstandardised.

∗p<.05. ∗∗ p<.01. ∗∗∗ p<.001.

authority support suggested by Allport. Also, the mea-

sure we used mostly captured opportunities and sup-

port for contact. This interpretation, however, still needs

clear empirical support since the present analyses did

not focus on (inter)ethnic bullying and was moreover of

cross-sectional nature. Our study shows that perceived

TSD might foster a positive climate within a class, opera-

tionalised as lower frequencies of victimising peers. How-

ever, perceived TSD was not associated with victimisation

scores (H3). It might be necessary to examine the ethnic

background of the victims. TSD might not have a positive

effect if the victims are members of the majority group

and their ethnic background is not the reason for their

victimisation. Schwarzenthal et al. (2018) even found in

their study that TSD was associated with more perceived

discrimination. They suggest that non-immigrant students

might feel excluded by pluralistic norms in a class.

In line with our hypothesis, individually perceived

TSD was linked to higher scores of cognitive and affective

empathy in individual students (H4) indicating that mea-

sures in class fostering interactions between students of

different cultures might be used to enhance social com-

petences like empathy. Numerous studies showing that

intergroup contact and multicultural education foster cog-

nitive and affective empathy (Pettigrew et al., 2011; Todd

& Galinsky, 2012) support this interpretation. Moreover,

there is an indirect link: through being positively linked

to affective empathy, perceived TSD is negatively linked

to bullying. If supported by future longitudinal data, this

might indicate that creating a climate supportive of diver-

sity could be important for bullying prevention. Moreover,

research has shown that intergroup contact is also associ-

ated with assertive bystander intentions through the paths

of empathy, cultural openness, and low in-group bias

(Abbott & Cameron, 2014). Our results might therefore

also be relevant for the bystanders of bullying situations.

On the class level, no direct or indirect links were

found for perceived TSD. The mean level of perceived

776 SCHULTZE-KRUMBHOLZ, ITTEL, SCHEITHAUER

TSD within a class thus has no association with individ-

ual competences or behaviour. This is in contrast to the

current trend in bullying research of moving away from

individual factors towards contextual influences (Smith

et al., 2019) and does so far not support the assumption

that multicultural education in the classroom context pro-

motes perspective-taking (e.g. Todd & Galinsky, 2012).

Overall, influences on the class level were small in our

sample although comparable to those of other studies on

bullying (e.g. Stefanek et al., 2011), but in contrast to

studies on inter-ethnic attitudes, which found larger influ-

ences on the class level (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2013). Our

results therefore support the assumption that bullying is

mostly influenced by individual factors or by how con-

textual factors are perceived and processed individually.

The cultural diversity index showed a negative relation

with cognitive empathy, no link with affective empathy

(H2) and no direct or indirect association with victimi-

sation or bullying (H1). This might indicate that the less

power imbalance there is in a class, the less students are

willing to take over the perspective of others, that is, there

are more in-group members that students might identify

with making it less likely that they connect with mem-

bers of out-groups. If groups and power are more balanced

across a class, a stronger separation might take place and

students might see less need to take into consideration

minority students, as they seem to have a peer group more

similar to themselves available. Regarding general bully-

ing and victimisation, the lack of significant associations

with cultural diversity does not provide support for the

power imbalance hypothesis by Graham (2006).

Regarding empathy, the results on the individual level

show the expected links of empathy only between affec-

tive empathy and bullying. Below-average scores on

affective empathy predicted higher rates of bullying.

No such link was found for victimisation. Both results

are in line with previous research (van Noorden et al.,

2015). The lack of any significant link between bully-

ing/victimisation and cognitive empathy contributes to

the inconsistent picture of the role of cognitive empathy in

peer victimisation among adolescent students (Zych et al.,

2019).

Contrary to our expectations, we did not find any sig-

nificant associations for victimisation and the model only

explained very little differences on the individual level.

There was an even smaller influence of the class level

than for bullying and also than in other studies (Stefanek

et al., 2011). The results indicate that in our sample vic-

timisation was not related to diversity (H1), TSD (H3) or

empathy and that other indicators are needed to develop

effective prevention approaches against victimisation.

Limitations

One limitation is that the method of self-reports

requires self-incrimination and may thus lead to an

underestimation of bullying. We tried to prevent this as

best as possible by assessing a list of typical behaviours

associated with bullying but avoiding the label of bullying

itself.

The present analyses are based on cross-sectional data.

Conclusions can only be drawn regarding associations,

but not about cause and effects. Future analyses should

establish causal links or at least a time sequence of

effects.

Our measure of cognitive empathy only consisted of

the subscale “perspective-taking” from an established

instrument and its focus is more on understanding others

cognitions than their emotions. It therefore does not assess

the complete range of aspects of cognitive empathy.

Regarding migrant background, the assessment used

is not as detailed as desirable. Country of birth was

not assessed for parents due to data protection issues.

Instead, language spoken at home with the parents was

assessed, but only with reference to parents generally,

not separately for each parent leaving out families with

one immigrant parent where at least two languages are

spoken equally or families with a migrant background

who speak German at home. Rather, with our procedure

we categorised students according to the dominant cul-

ture in the family. We also did not differentiate first and

second generation migrant-background students, because

the subsample of these students was comparatively small

already. Students with migrant background were gener-

ally underrepresented, which might be confounded with

the school track included in our study. Of the five par-

ticipating schools, four were college preparatory high

schools while only one was a general high school. Stu-

dents with migrant background, however, are much more

likely to visit schools of lower educational tracks (OECD,

2018).

The present data were collected in 2011. Composition

of ethnic backgrounds were likely different then and the

present analyses might not be applicable to the current sit-

uation. In addition, public awareness of the topic might be

different today; efforts might have increased, for example,

in the education system, and perceptions might be differ-

ent today.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

In the present study, bullying and victimisation were not

associated with the cultural composition of a class. How-

ever, perceived TSD seemed to be a protective factor

against bullying, but not victimisation. The proportion of

variance on the class level indicated that bullying and vic-

timisation take place equally in all (participating) classes,

independent of class composition. Teacher efforts, how-

ever, may be successful in fostering social competences

such as cognitive and affective empathy, which in turn

seem to be suitable to reduce or prevent bullying, at least

CULTURAL DIVERSITY, EMPATHY AND BULLYING 777

regarding affective empathy. Future studies need to repli-

cate or refute these findings.

As the present analyses were of a rather univer-

sal nature, including all students and not focusing on

sub-samples, future analyses and studies should examine

whether the present constructs show differential effects

for subgroups. Also, school track and socio-economic sta-

tus of students and schools should be taken into account

in future analyses.

As political and societal situations are constantly

changing, researchers might need to constantly update

and repeat their studies (or use ongoing study designs) in

order to map developments and changes over time and to

regularly update prevention and intervention measures.

Manuscript received November 2018

Revised manuscript accepted May 2020

First published online July 2020

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