Aggressive behaviour has a negative impact on students who are exposed to aggressive behaviour as well as on pupils and students who are aggressive (Schwartz, Gorman, Nakamoto, McKay, 2006). In schools, aggressive behaviour disrupts the process of learning and affects the school climate. It is also related to students having negative attitudes towards school and school subjects and leads to lower educational achievements. The methods of preventing and reducing aggressive behaviour at school level that prove to be successful often include activities related to emotional learning and empathy (empathic care, perspective taking) (Batanova, Cance & Loukas, 2016; Roberton, Daffern, & Bucks, 2012). Empathy includes cognitive and emotional components and is associated with positive effects on relationships and behaviour, while the lack of it is associated with negative effects, including aggressive behaviour. Concerning the relationship between empathy and aggressiveness, the most basic assumption would be that people who show highly aggressive behaviour lack empathy. It is also easy to speculate that presumably very empathic people do not tend to exhibit aggressive response. In accordance with this hypothesis, Miller and Eisenberg (1988) discovered that empathy buffers aggressive behaviour, whereas it promotes prosocial behaviour (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). In the presentation we will focus on the relationship between aggression and empathy in the period of adolescence. Research shows that the relationship between aggression and empathy is negative, that is, individuals who are more aggressive show lower levels of empathy (Lovett & Sheffield, 2007). More precisely, the cognitive component of empathy (the perspective taking) and the emotional part (empathic concern) are negative predictors of aggression (van Hazebroek, Olthof, & Goossens, 2017). We will analyse the associations between aggression (measured with LA aggression scale, Kozina, 2014) and empathy (measured with IRI, Davis, 1980) in the samples of Slovenian 8th-grade students (from 12 schools) involved in HAND in HAND project. We will look at the: (i) associations between empathy and aggression before and after implementation of HAND in HAND social, emotional and intercultural learning program; change in empathy before and after implementation of the HAND in HAND program; change in aggression before and after implementation of the HAND in HAND program. On the basis of the findings, the guidelines for practice and further research will be developed.

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