How do you put a stop to bullying? For a primary school in Cambridge, England, the answer lay in a work of fiction.
For years, one class had had “real problems with bullying and damaging relationships,” says teacher Helen Mulligan. Malorie Blackman’s book Cloudbusting, the story of an unlikely friendship between two boys, offered a way to explore relevant issues without making it personal and potentially worsening the situation. The pupils discussed the roles and perspectives of each character — bully, victim, bystander, supporter — and what needed to change.
“Children who played particular roles were suddenly able to see themselves in the characters,” Mulligan explained in a video testimonial. She saw pupils, who for years had not considered their own actions, “suddenly reflect, analyze and amend the behavior of the characters in the books — and then follow through themselves.”
The school was using resources from EmpathyLab, a U.K. organization that aims “to raise an empathy-educated generation” through the power of reading. Independent research has shown that this is one of the best ways to understand other people’s perspectives.
Stories allow us to “walk around” the character, and to consider their viewpoint in a safe way, says Imogen Bond, managing director at EmpathyLab: “We might think of reading as something that you do in isolation … actually, it’s something that really connects us to other people.”
EmpathyLab is just one of a number of initiatives built on the premise that empathy is not so much a trait one is born with, but rather a muscle that can be trained. Many educators and experts see such training as vital — for individuals and for wider society.
Empathy Studios has similar goals to EmpathyLab, but uses film rather than books to expose youngsters to other life experiences. But these are not your typical educational videos, says founder Ed Kirwan, a former science teacher turned filmmaker.
“Unfortunately, because entertainment has got so good, students expect that same level of material in their education,” he says. A talking head explaining why bullying is bad, for example, won’t work: “They’ve heard it all before. … It’s boring. It’s dull. It’s repetitive,” he says. Kids disengage and don’t learn anything.
Instead, Empathy Studios creates what Kirwan calls “Netflix-style” stories about real people around the world — like the Mexican mountain guide, or the hijab-wearing female footballer — and accompanying, age-appropriate teaching resources. By encouraging curiosity and exploring different perspectives, the stories act as a “trojan horse for empathy building,” according to the organization.
And it seems to work: a 2024 evaluation of 900 students in six countries found that a semester-long program of Empathy Studios lessons led to measurable, positive changes in behavior, emotional awareness and curiosity about different cultures.
Cambridge University’s Helen Demetriou, who has studied empathy since the mid-1990s and helped design and interpret the Empathy Studios evaluation, says these positive results were to be expected, given how “empathy-rich” the materials are. And yet, she adds, “to think that such a small amount of intervention and time and exposure has had this impact is quite surprising, in some ways.”
Empathy can be viewed as three elements, Demetriou explains: There’s an emotional (feeling) part, and a cognitive (understanding) part. Too much of one without the other can be problematic, but combined, they prompt a third element: the motivation to help.
Thanks to a recent breakthrough in genetics, we know more about what makes us empathetic. In 2018, scientists discovered that only around 10 percent is genetic — meaning up to 90 percent comes from social factors, such as upbringing or environment. That makes it “really important to think about how it can be learned in schools,” Demetriou says.
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Studies also show that children are naturally empathetic, but this drops away as life experiences make us biased or we become “cognitively busy” — thinking about multiple things at once and losing sight of the emotional aspects, according to Demetriou. The shift can happen at a young age if kids are exposed to negative experiences. But even children who retain their natural empathy need to build on it: “It’s so very important to keep going with it. It’s like a muscle: It needs exercising.”
Educators are usually on board with this; after all, empathy is increasingly recognized as essential for everything from healthy relationships to creativity to getting ahead in the workplace. But teachers are often time-stretched and under pressure to focus on other priorities.
“There’s a real drive for being able to measure every inch of a child’s progress, and it is harder to do that with things like social and emotional skills, because it’s not a linear process and it’s just much harder to put a number against it,” says Bond. Schools are helping students to develop empathy, but “it’s happening as a byproduct of things, rather than as the main focus, which I think is really problematic.”
Bond would like to see schools teaching empathy as a distinct subject, citing Finland as an example. Finland and Denmark have both used “empathy classes” to encourage respect, self-esteem and kindness, reportedly contributing to lower levels of bullying. Until that idea spreads further, initiatives like EmpathyLab are stepping in.
Teaching empathy is not a new idea. Roots of Empathy was created in Canada in 1996, and now operates in multiple countries. In this program, a parent and their baby visit an elementary class over the course of the school year, along with a trained instructor. Pupils observe the parent-baby relationship, and develop emotional literacy as they identify the baby’s feelings, reflect on and understand their own feelings, then consider the feelings of others. Evaluations show that pupils are kinder, more cooperative and less likely to bully others, compared to those who did not participate, and that the positive effects can last for years.
Some newer initiatives build empathy as part of a focus on giving back to the community. U.S. nonprofit The Giving Square runs a book award scheme, where kids select the best books each year that encourage empathy and responsibility toward others. The U.K.’s First Give gets pupils to explore issues affecting their community, identify a local charity addressing their chosen issue and then come up with ways to support it. This real-life context embeds empathy more deeply, says First Give director Isaac Jones, “laying the foundations for a more generous and connected society.” Other efforts train the empathic muscle through discussion: The charity Parallel Histories gets schoolkids to analyze and then debate controversial topics such as the Israel-Palestine conflict.
For EmpathyLab and Empathy Studios, balancing breadth of reach and depth of impact is important: both organizations work directly with schools, but also run large-scale, free annual events enabling them to reach hundreds of thousands of people.
Both also train teachers to ensure the resources have the maximum impact. “Reading on your own will take you so far in terms of understanding another perspective, or building that language or ability to reflect,” says Bond. But the “additional exploration” guided by adults requires that they feel confident in this area, too. “That’s not always easy when teachers are juggling a lot.”
Bond points to wider issues in literacy. In 2024, the percentage of U.K. children and young people who enjoy reading hit its lowest level since 2005. School libraries and librarians are becoming less common. And celebrities-turned-authors dominate the shelves of new releases, which can mean less space for a diverse range of stories, with richly drawn characters, told from different perspectives.
There are also challenges in reconciling differing understandings of empathy. One social psychologist argues that the term can refer to eight different concepts, including imagining how one would feel or think in another person’s place, or feeling distress at their suffering.
For Kirwan, confusion around the term is a barrier to teaching it as a skill. Some see it as acts of kindness or simply “being nice” — whereas, he says, “empathy, for us, is about understanding in its simplest form.” Empathy Studios’ work therefore includes explaining what empathy is, and showing that it can be a bridge to understanding someone’s behavior, even if you don’t agree with them.
And while some may dismiss empathy as something gentle, soft or fuzzy, this is absolutely not the case, says Demetriou: “We need a re-education with the term. … If anything, it’s extremely powerful.”
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