Search Results (1,529)

This qualitative study explores the induction experiences of Palestinian Arab novice teachers in Jewish-majority schools in Israel during a period of intense national tension (2023–2025). Amid ongoing teacher shortages in the Jewish sector and a surplus of qualified teachers in the Arab sector, Boundary-Crossing Teaching (BCT) has become a notable phenomenon. Using semi-structured interviews and reflective journals of 23 beginning teachers and eight mentors, the study investigates how minority educators navigate cultural and political divides in a conflict-affected society. The findings reveal that during periods of heightened tension, teachers’ professional identity is often overshadowed by ethnic suspicion, leading to a “dual burden” of professional and national representation. The data shows that teachers navigate national ceremonies through “strategic ambiguity”—performing outward compliance (e.g., standing for the siren) while maintaining internal identity boundaries. Furthermore, the study identifies a paradox in language dynamics: while Palestinian Arabic is often “securitized” and viewed with suspicion in staffrooms, teachers successfully leverage their linguistic background as “intercultural capital” to build empathy with students. The research finds that shared-identity mentors provide an essential “third space” for processing experiences of racism that are otherwise silenced within the school hierarchy. These empirical results demonstrate that teacher retention in conflict zones requires active institutional protection to prevent professional status from collapsing into national categorization. Full article

Background: Cyberbullying has emerged as a major public health concern with profound psychological repercussions on the adolescent population. The shift toward virtual communication has fundamentally altered interpersonal dynamics, removing the spatio-temporal barriers of aggression and creating new challenges for mental health. Methods: A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, including a comprehensive update executed in February 2026. Searches were performed across PubMed, EBSCO, Web of Science, and Scopus. The review included observational and experimental studies involving adolescents (aged 10–19 years) reporting clinical mental health outcomes. Methodological quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal tools. Results: Forty-two high-quality articles were selected. Key findings include the following: Prevalence: A median cyber-victimization prevalence of 19.1% was identified, although significant methodological heterogeneity exists with ranges between 2.1% and 88.0%. Clinical Impact: Victims exhibited significantly elevated rates of depression (90%) and anxiety (87%) compared to uninvolved peers. Suicidality: Victimization is a critical risk factor, with suicide attempts reported in 19.0% of victims, compared to 3.0% in aggressors. Vulnerable Groups: Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrated extreme vulnerability, with victimization rates between 64.1% and 68.9%. Additionally, females and LGBTQ+ youth showed a higher risk of symptom internalization and post-traumatic stress. The Role of the Bystander: Observers experienced fear, moral frustration, and helplessness, acting as either passive reinforcers or active upstanders depending on the school climate. Conclusions and Implications: Effective prevention requires a socio-ecological approach that transcends the classroom, integrating families, healthcare centers, and technological platforms. A transition toward modernized cyber-education is recommended, utilizing interactive tools and “serious games” to foster empathy. Full article

AI-enabled technology (AI) has a transformational role in our modern society because it is increasingly used as an interaction partner, making anthropomorphism (tendency to ascribe human features to non-human agents) a central mechanism shaping how people evaluate, accept or resist AI systems. Existing technology acceptance models and anthropomorphism frameworks, however, offer limited guidance on how human-like attributes of AI translate into perceptions of usefulness, perceived control, perceived opportunity or threats, particularly across different levels of AI autonomy. Building on the theory of planned behavior, the technology acceptance model and threat rigidity model, this paper develops a mid-range conceptual framework of AI anthropomorphism grounded in universal social perception dimensions of warmth and competence. We integrate fragmented research to derive three core propositions and four corollaries that specify how warmth and competence attributions shape evaluative cognitions in relation to AI. The framework further identifies AI autonomy as a boundary condition under which anthropomorphic cues may either facilitate acceptance or trigger perceptions of pseudo-empathy, cognitive superiority and identity threat. By offering a parsimonious, theoretically informed model, this paper clarifies when anthropomorphism fosters acceptance versus resistance in human–AI interaction and provides a structured agenda for future empirical research and AI design aimed at fostering synergies and resilience in human–AI ecosystems. Full article

The purpose of this study is to explore how adolescents in self-contained classrooms or schools for students with autism or ADHD, with no prior involvement in criminality, perceive and interpret different forms of early offending behavior through fictional case stories. The study specifically aims to examine their ability to discern what constitutes offending behavior, based on the double empathy problem. In total, 13 participants currently receiving secondary-level education (grades 10–12, aged 16–20 years) in self-contained classes at schools for adolescents with autism or ADHD participated. No student had cognitive disabilities or had been involved in any criminal act or criminal justice issues. The students were individually given three fictional written cases of offending behavior (theft, physical assault, and sexual assault). Audio-recorded stimulated recall interviews were obtained while the students solved tasks in relation to the cases, and these were analyzed to capture whether and what aspects of early offending were discerned. Overall, the results indicated limited awareness and enhanced social vulnerability, risking unwitting engagement in early offending behavior. Adapting social science education to students’ special educational needs to understand social interactions might be used to prevent and enhance their awareness of early offending behavior. Full article

Background/Objectives: Empathy is a core component of professional competence in dentistry, influencing patient-centered care and treatment outcomes. Evidence suggests that empathy may decline during clinical training, but data from Lithuanian dental students are lacking. This study aimed to assess empathy levels and subscale patterns among Lithuanian dental students and examine their association with academic year. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among third- to fifth-year dental students at the two universities in Lithuania. The Lithuanian version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy–Health Professions Students (JSE-HPS) was used to measure total empathy and three subscales: Perspective Taking (PT), Compassionate Care (CC), and Standing in the Patient’s Shoes (SPS). Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Factor validity was examined via principal component analysis with Varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization. Differences across academic years were analyzed using Kruskal–Wallis tests. Results: A total of 252 students completed the questionnaire (response rate: 93%). The Lithuanian JSE-HPS demonstrated good internal consistency (α = 0.808) and confirmed a three-factor structure. The mean total empathy score was 106.07 ± 12.55. JSE-HPS scores differed significantly between dental classes (p < 0.001). Fifth-year students had significantly lower JSE-HPS scores than third- and fourth-year students (101.65 vs. 107.05 and 109.36; p = 0.035 and p = 0.007). PT and CC scores significantly declined in fifth-year students compared with earlier years, whereas SPS scores remained stable. Conclusions: The Lithuanian version of the JSE-HPS is a reliable and psychometrically sound tool for assessing empathy. Clinical training was significantly associated with a decline in total empathy scores among Lithuanian dental students, highlighting the impact of academic progression on both cognitive and affective components of empathy. Given the cross-sectional design, causal inferences cannot be drawn. Full article

Virtual live streaming enables consumers to engage with virtual anchors, facilitating product information acquisition and online transactions. Despite its promising prospects, the field currently grapples with insufficient purchase intention. Anthropomorphizing virtual anchors in such contexts is common, yet the uncanny valley effect can undermine consumer acceptance. Drawing on mind perception and anthropomorphism theories, we explore factors influencing purchase intention in virtual live streaming. Analyzing data from 197 Taobao virtual live streaming consumers, we find that utility and responsiveness positively affect perceived agency, while friendliness and empathy enhance perceived experience. Moreover, perceived agency and experience positively affect purchase intention. Anthropomorphism strengthens the link between utility/responsiveness and perceived agency but weakens the association between friendliness and perceived experience. Our findings offer insights for both research and practice, though limitations are acknowledged and discussed. Full article

Religiosity and empathy have been identified as two key variables that may significantly influence an individual’s social justice attitude and behavior. Despite their significance, studies addressing the relationships between these variables are rare. Thus, the present study aims to explore the associations between interpersonal empathy, instrumental religiosity, and social justice values using the conceptual framework of motivated information processing theory. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to assess the hypothetical relationships between these variables. The findings indicate that personal instrumental religiosity, social interaction, and cognitive behavior are positively associated with the level of adherence to both instrumental and social terminal values of social justice. In contrast, social instrumental religiosity exerts only a direct influence on the instrumental values of social justice. This study also revealed the role of social interaction and cognitive behavior as mediators between personal instrumental religiosity and the instrumental and social terminal values of social justice. The findings underscore the imperative for researchers to devise educational programs that acknowledge and promote the significance of religion and empathy in fostering a more equitable and compassionate society. Full article

As Education for environmental resilience increasingly adopts Game-based learning (GBL) to address climate challenges, a critical ambiguity remains regarding how learning outcomes are structured. While games effectively enhance learner engagement, it is unclear whether this affective participation translates into the higher-order competency of sustainable climate resilience. To address this, this study followed PRISMA guidelines to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) of 175 studies published between 2015 and 2025. We adopted a hierarchical taxonomy to code outcomes, distinguishing between affective precursors (empathy), cognitive foundations (systems thinking), and the ultimate goal of resilience (adaptive action competence). The macro-analysis indicated that although the complexity of game simulations has risen, evaluations often remain arrested at the motivational level due to a disjunction between game affordances and instructional support. Multi-level coding further reveals that specific mechanisms, such as dynamic perturbation, spatio-temporal feedback, and resource trade-offs, provide the structural scaffolding necessary to elevate learning from shallow empathy to cognitive resilience. Based on these findings, we propose the Game–Teacher–Resilience (GTR) Framework, arguing that transformative education requires coupling specific mechanics with pedagogical intervention to bridge the gap between engagement and resilience. Full article

An empathetic chatbot is an essential component of intelligent mental healthcare. We adopted implicitly empathy prompting (IEP) by decomposing empathy into supportive dialogue, paraphrased response, emotional understanding, and attitude expression, referred to as the four features of empathy decomposition. IEP is based on lightweight language multi-agents (LLM-Agents) to generate empathy dialogue. The approach contrasts with the explicitly defined empathy of simply prompting a model to be empathetic. Three datasets for the four features scenario were generated by using the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT)-4o model, with cases in finance, family, and health issues. For each dataset, 30 examples were randomly selected and examined as input prompting onto six lightweight language models. These models include Mistral (7B), Phi-4 (14B), StableLM2 (12B), Tulu3 (8B), Neural-chat (7B), and Llama 3.1-Instruct (8B). After that, the output was evaluated by using GPT-4o to calculate empathy perception scores (EP scores). The average EP scores on three datasets for implicit/explicit empathy prompting ranged from 1 to 10. The final evaluation results are as follows: (1) implicitly empathy prompting (IEP): Mistral (8.83), Phi-4 (8.96), StableLM2 (9.03), Tulu3 (7.24), Neural-chat: (8.03), Llama 3.1-Instruct (8.74); (2) Explicitly Empathy Prompting (EEP): Mistral (7.52), Phi-4 (8.55), StableLM2 (7.78), Tulu3 (7.67), Neural-chat (8.35), Llama 3.1-Instruct (8.76). Among these values, three models (Mistral, Phi-4, and StableLM2) achieve higher and stable EP scores obviously. The other models (Tulu3, Neural-chat, and Llama 3.1-Instruct) keep comparable EP scores. Our experiment findings showed that the prompt engineering method with the IEP approach could significantly outperform EEP. Full article

Victimhood in media discourse refers to how individuals or groups subjected to harm are represented and made visible to the public. These representations shape whether audiences respond with empathy or emotional distance, in particular as it pertains to mass violence events such as wars. News texts can humanize suffering by providing personal detail, evocative language, and contextual depth; or they can neutralize it through detached, fact-focused reporting. The extent to which people are perceived as “worthy victims” depends not only on the words and images chosen but also on the surrounding narrative—whether the event is framed as intentional harm or an unfortunate incident, whether victims are named and individualized or rendered as anonymous masses. In this way, media reporting does not merely record suffering but actively constructs hierarchies of victimhood, influencing who appears deserving of compassion and whose suffering remains invisible or muted. Full article

Background: Observational fear, a form of empathic response to others’ distress, exhibits marked sex differences. Oxytocin (OT) is a key modulator of social and emotional behaviors, but its role in observational fear—and how this varies by sex and administration route—remains controversial. Methods: We studied behavioral responses in male and female mice during observational fear. We first blocked systemic oxytocin (OT) signaling with a peripheral antagonist. We then tested different routes of OT administration (intranasal, intraperitoneal). Further, we microinjected OT directly into the anterior insular cortex (AIC). Finally, we used a chemogenetics strategy to selectively activate or inhibit OT neurons. Results: Male mice exhibited sustained freezing behavior and elevated corticosterone levels in response to observational fear. In contrast, females more quickly resumed baseline activity levels and showed an increased number of interactions. Systemic blockade of oxytocin (OT) signaling selectively reduced fear expression in males. Strikingly, intranasal OT administration elicited heightened fear-related responses in both sexes, whereas intraperitoneal OT administration induced anxiolytic-like effects. Direct OT microinjection into the anterior insular cortex (AIC) produced sex-divergent reductions in fear responses: decreasing freezing duration in males and reducing avoidance behaviors in females. Chemogenetic activation of OTergic neurons replicated these anxiolytic effects, while inhibition had no effect. Conclusions: OT bidirectionally regulates observational fear in a sex-, route-, and site-specific manner, challenging the simplistic view of OT as universally prosocial. The AIC is a critical node in empathetic fear circuits. These findings underscore the necessity for precision in targeting the OT system for treating stress-related psychiatric disorders. Full article

Callous–unemotional (CU) traits are characterised by reduced empathy, guilt, and emotional responsiveness, and are strongly linked to atypical socioemotional processing. Eye-tracking research provides a valuable window into these processes by capturing early developing patterns of attention to emotionally salient social cues, particularly facial expressions. This narrative review examines how alterations in gaze behaviour contribute to the emergence of CU traits across neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs), with a focus on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and conduct disorder (CD). Across studies, elevated CU traits are associated with reduced fixations on the eye region, most consistently in response to fearful faces. ASD is associated with robust eye avoidance, ADHD with inhibitory and attentional control difficulties during face processing, and CD with atypical gaze allocation to negative emotional expressions such as fear and anger. These patterns appear amplified when CU traits co-occur with NDs. Competing explanatory accounts, including aberrant amygdala functioning, oculomotor disinhibition, and hostile attribution biases, each capture aspects of these patterns but fail to provide a unified explanation. Integrating developmental, neurobiological, and environmental perspectives, we propose that CU traits reflect a transdiagnostic developmental construct shaped by early attentional–emotional mechanisms, rather than a disorder-specific identity. Full article

This integrative literature review examines how virtual reality (VR) design can transform environmental understanding by changing users from passive observers to active participants in ecological systems. We aimed to analyze the interaction strategies through which VR enables environmental awareness and to identify the most effective approaches for fostering ecological connection. Through systematic analysis of studies published between 2015 and 2025, we found that effective VR implementations share three core design mechanisms: progressive engagement that builds connection over time, a careful balance between interaction and reflection, and multisensory integration that creates believable immersive experiences. These design mechanisms, in turn, build ecological connection through three fundamental pillars: perspective-taking that generates empathy, the creation of authentic sensory experiences, and the development of network thinking to understand complex interconnections. This review contributes to the field by mapping the development of environmental VR applications, identifying successful implementation strategies, and highlighting research gaps. Our analysis provides a comprehensive interaction framework for designing more effective environmental experiences and advancing this emerging field when innovative approaches are most needed. Full article

This study examines the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as a mediating tool in values training, based on university students’ reflections on their own values and those represented in literary characters. The research, developed at the Catholic University of Murcia (Spain) and University Collegue Cork (Ireland) integrated the humanistic approach of literature with the pedagogical potential of AI. An exploratory–descriptive mixed-methods design was applied with 126 students of Education and Philology. The instruments included the Hall–Tonna questionnaire, a 12-item Likert scale, and open-ended questions, analyzed using descriptive statistics, mean comparison, and thematic content analysis. The results reflect a preference for values such as justice, perseverance, and empathy, with cultural differences: in Spain, solidarity and community spirit stood out; and in Ireland, integrity and individual responsibility stood out. A total of 78% positively rated AI mediation for its capacity to stimulate critical reflection and ethical debate, although risks linked to technological dependence and cultural bias were noted. It is concluded that the synergy between literature and AI enhances ethical and civic education, provided it is implemented from an ethical and humanizing perspective. Full article

The X-Men are a superhero team published by Marvel Comics. Initially marketed as a team of teenage superheroes, the franchise eventually began emphasizing the “mutant metaphor” as a narrative device that differentiated it from other comic books. This pivot towards highlighting the empathy displayed by the X-Men towards others and the intolerance their foes have for anyone who is different became defining characteristics of the franchise that have carried forward for decades. As the X-Men moved from a somewhat generic franchise to one that framed its heroes as symbolic outsiders, a wider and deeper fanbase embraced the series. Through complex storylines, symbolic metaphors, and nuanced character development, the series implicitly and often explicitly encourages empathy. With a thematic focus on concepts such as marginalization and otherness, the X-Men franchise promotes tolerance as heroic and condemns prejudice as villainous. The message for readers is that empathy, not optic blasts or the ability to control the weather, is what makes the X-Men heroic. Full article