VICTEC (Virtual ICT with Empathic Characters): An innovative approach for dealing with bullying problems Sarah Woods Dieter Wolke Carsten Zoll Harald Schaub Sibylle Enz The Bullying Problem Well documented that bullying behaviour in schools is a worldwide problem that can have serious physical and psychological health consequences. There are 3 main types of bullying behaviour: 1. direct/physical (punching, kicking, pinching, threats) 2. verbal (nasty name calling, nasty text messages) 3. relational (exclusion from the peer group, nasty rumour spreading) Studies demonstrate that intervention initiatives to date have revealed limited success in reducing bullying problems in the long-term. What is VICTEC? VICTEC is an EU sponsored project which aims to provide an innovative intervention approach to deal with bullying problems for 8-12 year olds using Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). Children will work through a variety of scenarios within a VLE that deals with direct, verbal and relational bullying. Children will take the role of the ‘advisor’ in the scenarios and provide the key character with coping strategies to deal with bullying. A key requisite for a successful intervention using VLE’s concerns the believability of the storylines and the creation of empathic relations between the virtual characters and the child leading to increased social immersion. Bullying Scenarios A software package called ‘Kar2ouche’ has assisted in the development of initial direct & relational bullying scenarios. This has been tested with children cross-culturally to determine the believability of the storyline and empathy with characters. Bullying Scenarios: Results Results have revealed encouraging findings with children significantly preferring the victim characters compared to bully characters. Gender is important for the design of animated characters, particularly for boys who were more gender specific. Children expressed empathy for the victim characters although there was a trend for boys not to exhibit as much affective empathy for the characters compared to girls (19.5% boys vs 5.4% girls did not express empathy). No children expressed empathy for the male bully character. The VICTEC Trailer The VICTEC trailer has been designed to evaluate the likeability of the 3-D characters for the final version of the VLE, the believability of the bullying scenarios and the empathic feelings created between the child user and the animated characters. The VICTEC Trailer: Results An initial evaluation of the trailer revealed that 8-12 year olds liked the cartoon characters & 68% of children reported high story believability. Although some children rated the physical attributes of the characters as unbelievable, this did not have a negative impact on story engagement & believability. Empathic relationships between the child user and the virtual characters To promote empathic relationships between the child user and the virtual characters several steps have been taken within the VICTEC project: Studies have been carried out to identify believable scenarios (see above) and character behaviours. Since computer scientists are not able to create absolute realistic characters (zombie valley), cartoon characters are more appropriate to create believability and empathy. The stories displayed on the screen are not pre-scripted, but use Emergent Narrative. Only the virtual characters (with dispositions, motivations and emotions) and the virtual environment are specified, and the autonomous character “creates” the story runtime. The Role of Empathy in VICTEC Empathy is a key concept in VICTEC and describes the ability of one person (“observer”) to react on the internal state of another person (“target”). Cognitive and affective empathy are relevant for VICTEC: Cognitive Empathy: The Observer knows the internal state (cognitions and emotions) of the target. Affective Empathy: The Observer feels something (not necessarily the same) due to the reception of the emotional state of the target. Dispositional Empathy Measurement Empathy is measured in the VICTEC project by a self-developed questionnaire. The questionnaire exists in three languages (English, Portuguese, German) and has been piloted in all three countries. Quality factors from German sample (n = 234, 109 boys / 125 girls, av. age: 9.62):  Objectivity: highly standardised procedure  Reliability /Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha):  =.84  Validity: All Items have been judged by experts (psychology professionals) concerning their appropriateness for the measurement of empathy. Two relevant empathy factors (cognitive & affective) were confirmed in a PCA. Results show gender and age differences in empathy, which have previously been reported in literature (e.g. Eisenberg, 1991). This project is carried out with the support of the European Community in the Framework V Programme Further information about the project can be found at