This paper considers the impact of gender on the design of animated agents that aim to
evoke empathy and to encourage children to explore issues related to bullying. High fidelity
storyboards containing bullying scenarios were presented to 80 ten year old children from
two schools. Children individually completed a questionnaire that focused on amongst other
things the empathic relationship between the child and the characters in the storyboard.
Results indicate significant differences between the genders, with greater levels of empathy
and comprehension achieved when characters are of the same gender as the child. This has
considerable implications for the design of animated characters for bullying scenarios, requiring that the gender of the child is taken into account when designing animated characters and
the scenarios they participate in.