ORIGINAL PAPER Empathy, Attitude Towards Bullying, Theory-of-Mind, and Non-physical Forms of Bully Perpetration and Victimization Among U.S. Middle School Students Dorothy L. Espelage 1 • Jun Sung Hong 2,3 • Dong Ha Kim 4 • Luana Nan 5 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract Background Children’s bullying involvement may arise from biases and deficiencies in social information processing, and it is important to consider cognitive and emotional aspects of bullying because social cognition is an important aspect of children’s social skills and their ability to get along with others. It is also important to understand how children see things from others’ point-of-view. Objective The study examined whether empathic concern, perspective-taking, attitude towards bullying, and Theory-of-Mind were associated with non-physical form of bully perpetration and victimization in diverse sample of middle school students. Dorothy L. Espelage and Jun Sung Hong contributed equally to the article and are co-first authors. & Dorothy L. Espelage espelage@ufl.edu Jun Sung Hong fl4684@wayne.edu; fl4684@skku.edu Dong Ha Kim dhkim@chungwoon.ac.kr Luana Nan nanl@purdue.edu 1 Department of Psychology, University of Florida, 945 Center Dr., Gainesville, FL 32611-2250, USA 2 School of Social Work, Wayne State University, 5447 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202, USA 3 Department of Social Welfare, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2 Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea 4 Department of Social Welfare, Chungwoon University, Daehagil-25, Hongseong, Chungnam, South Korea 5 College of Veterinary Medicine Counseling and Wellness Services, Purdue University, 625 Harrison Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA 123 Child Youth Care Forum DOI 10.1007/s10566-017-9416-z