School Performance, Empathy and Social Competence

In Brazil, little has been found on the study of the relationships between the constructs of school performance, social competence - sociometric names - and empathy, which refer to the social, affective and cognitive functioning of individuals. The main aim of this work is to analyse whether students with different school performance differ in their choices and rejections of classmates and in their self-perception of empathy. To this end, the author presents a study involving 217 adolescents aged between 10 and 14, separated into three groups with different school performance levels. Three measures were used. The students' academic performance was analysed using grades for the four school terms; their sociometric status was investigated in relation to their peers; and a self-report empathy assessment tool was used. The results showed that the school performance groups differed in all the variables of the sociometric measure, unlike the answers to the empathy self-report questionnaire.