Audiovisual media and development of empathy in teenagers

Abstract

The lack of empathy is not only a sign of selflessness or indifference, but also often causes violence towards other social agents, promoting bullying, even causing stress or depression «at best», or still worse, the suicide of the victim. Faced with such problems, the objective of this research was to raise awareness among social agents, mainly those who are in the stage of adolescence, regarding the importance of empathy in their social, family and school environment through the development of an audiovisual production that focused both empathy as emotional intelligence in its production. To achieve this goal, a quasi-experimental research was developed through the design, content validation and measurement of the reliability of a measuring instrument that would allow assessing the perceptions of the lower secondary education (middle school) students before and after the projection of a short film as an intervening variable. The remarkable findings evidenced changes in the students' perceptions about empathy and its implementation in their environment. In the same way a more assertive positioning was identified in the face of presented facts through the short film, the relationship between the practice of empathy in different spaces and how it can be possible to influence its realization in students. Finally, the importance of the production of audiovisual content in the appropriation of concepts such as empathy in students is highlighted.