The effects of adapted physical education sessions on the empathy of female students with overweight

Oumayma Slimi; Santo Marsigliante; Vito Ciardo; Mourad Bahloul; Okba Selmi; Nidhal Jebabli; Antonella Muscella

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1170446

The effects of adapted physical education sessions on the empathy of female students with overweight

Front Psychol. 2023 May 31:14:1170446. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1170446. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Oumayma Slimi¹, Santo Marsigliante², Vito Ciardo³, Mourad Bahloul^{4

5}, Okba Selmi⁶, Nidhal Jebabli⁶, Antonella Muscella²

Affiliations

¹ Higher Institute of Sport and Physical Education of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia.
² Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies (Di.S.Te.B.A.), University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.
³ Department of Biological and Environmental Science and Technologies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.
⁴ Higher Institute of Education and Continuing Training, Virtual University of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia.
⁵ Higher Institute of Business Administration of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia.
⁶ Higher Institute of Sports and Physical Education of Kef, University of Jendouba, Kef, Tunisia.

Abstract

The global prevalence of childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity increases rapidly. Physical activity plays a major role in the prevention of obesity. The present study aimed to analyze the effect of adapted basketball sessions according to the empathic capacity of adolescent girls with overweight. Forty-two girls with overweight (age: 16.09 ± 0.85; years; height: 1.64 ± 0.67 m: weight: 73.02 ± 0.61 kg; BMI: 27.15 ± 1.37) volunteered to participate in the study and were randomly assigned to the experimental group (EG, n = 21) and control group (CG, n = 21). EG was submitted to a basketball intervention adapted to students with obesity while the CG performed classic basketball exercises for 7 weeks. Each week girls had 2 basketball teaching-learning sessions, lasting 50 min. The participants' empathy was assessed before and after the intervention using the Favre CEC. The results showed that adaptation intervention was associated with a significant emotional contagion decrease (Δ% = 0.466) and splitting with emotions (Δ% = 0.375), and with an empathy increase (Δ% = 1.387), in EG compared to CG. No significant difference was assessed in the empathy CG, before and after the intervention. This study demonstrated that adapted physical education classes could be an effective strategy to improve empathetic skills and inclusion of overweight girls as well as a means to prevent obesity.

Keywords: adaptation; emotional splitting; empathy; obesity; physical education.