Boys are more driven while girls lead in compassion and empathy, study finds

A Norwegian eighth-grader can feel like they’re doing fine at school, safe enough in the hallways, and still carry a quiet story about themselves that shifts depending on whether they are a boy or a girl. It’s not just about grades. It’s about the inner stuff: confidence, persistence, kindness toward yourself, and how much support you think you’re getting from the people around you.

In a large survey of Year 8 pupils, boys tended to rate themselves higher on most measures tied to motivation and school experience. Girls stood out in a different way, scoring much higher on compassion for others and slightly higher on the compassion they felt they received.

That mix matters because the same traits that help students keep going, like self-efficacy and grit, are also connected to how resilient they feel.

The study, led by PhD student Vegard Renolen Litlabø at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Department of Psychology, drew on survey responses from 7,260 students ages 12 to 14 from 183 Norwegian secondary schools in early fall 2024. The schools were participating in a non-profit program called MOT Norge, described as focusing on preventive work to strengthen youth resilience, wellbeing, and life management.

Students answered the survey at school during normal hours, in a group setting, using a digital form. Because the participants were under 16, the study required active parental consent. No incentives were offered.

The questionnaire asked students to rate themselves on a set of psychological and school-related factors: passion, grit, growth mindset, self-efficacy, courage, school wellbeing, school safety, three forms of compassion (for others, for yourself, and received from others), and “flourishing,” a term used here to describe fulfilling your potential and functioning well.

When the researchers compared average scores, boys came out higher than girls on several categories: school wellbeing, school safety, growth mindset, passion, self-efficacy, courage and grit. They also rated themselves higher on self-compassion.

The size of these gaps varied. For many measures, the differences were statistically significant but small. The biggest separation showed up in compassion for others, where girls scored much higher than boys, with a moderate effect size (Cohen’s d = −0.60).

Flourishing was the exception. On that broader measure of psychological functioning, boys and girls were essentially the same. The difference was not statistically significant.

Litlabø put the overall pattern plainly: “Boys reported significantly higher levels of passion, grit, growth mindset, self-efficacy, courage, school well-being and school safety. They also reported higher levels of compassion for themselves.”

Girls, meanwhile, led in two areas: “Girls scored significantly higher on compassion for others. They also believe that they receive more compassion from others.”

On the surface, it can look like boys are “winning” most categories. The study’s more interesting angle comes from the relationships among the traits.

Across the full sample, every variable was positively related to every other variable. Some links were especially strong. Passion and growth mindset had the tightest connection (r = 0.68). School wellbeing and school safety were also strongly linked (r = 0.63). So were received compassion and self-compassion (r = 0.61).

Other relationships were weaker. Compassion for others had a small connection to school safety (r = 0.13). Grit and compassion for others were also weakly related (r = 0.15). Courage and school wellbeing had a low correlation (r = 0.16).

Then the researchers split the sample by gender and compared the strength of those correlations. Most differences were small, but a few patterns stood out.

Girls showed stronger links between self-efficacy and several other traits. Self-efficacy was more strongly tied to passion, growth mindset, grit, school safety and school wellbeing for girls than for boys. Put differently, believing you can succeed had more “gravity” in the girls’ data. When girls felt capable, more of the motivational system tended to rise together.

The connection between school safety and school wellbeing also ran stronger for girls (r = 0.67) than boys (r = 0.59). Feeling safe appeared more tightly bound to feeling good at school for girls.

And received compassion carried more weight for girls, too. It was more strongly linked to school wellbeing and flourishing for girls than boys. Receiving care and support, or at least perceiving it, seemed more central to how girls described their overall functioning.

Boys were not “low” on compassion across the board. They rated themselves higher on self-compassion, and the study found that, among boys, compassion for others tracked more closely with self-compassion and with received compassion than it did among girls.

One of the sharper gender splits came here: the link between compassion for others and self-compassion was much stronger for boys (r = 0.59) than girls (r = 0.40). Boys also showed a stronger relationship between received compassion and self-compassion (r = 0.57 vs. 0.44).

Litlabø framed it this way: boys did not appear inherently short on compassion, but they may express more compassion toward others when they feel supported or when they can access compassion toward themselves. He suggested that this could point to a greater need for socio-emotional learning for boys, skills tied to emotion regulation, relationships, decisions and goal-setting.

The dataset is large, but the study is still a snapshot. Students self-reported their traits, meaning the results reflect how pupils see themselves, not necessarily how they behave or how others would rate them.

Most of the gender differences in averages were small in effect size, even when statistically significant. The study also relies on correlations, which cannot show which factor comes first or whether one causes another. The researchers note that many of these traits likely work in both directions, rising together over time.

The study excluded students who indicated another gender identity or preferred not to disclose, because the groups were too small for analysis. That means the findings only describe boys and girls as categorized in this dataset.

Finally, the sample came from schools participating in MOT Norge (see video above), which could differ from schools not involved in that program.

If you’re looking for one takeaway, it’s that “motivation” in middle school is not a single knob you turn. It’s a cluster of beliefs and feelings that connect differently for boys and girls.

For girls, two targets stand out in the data: self-efficacy and self-compassion. Girls reported lower scores on both compared with boys, and those traits were more strongly tied to other parts of their wellbeing and school experience. Encouraging girls to trust their own competence, and to treat themselves with more kindness when things go wrong, may help more than generic pep talks about working harder.

For boys, the practical need may sit more in the social space. The study suggests boys could benefit from developing more compassion for others, not only for their own resilience but because it can shape the school environment around them. If compassion for others rises when boys feel supported and learn self-compassion, then programs that build emotional skills and supportive peer norms could have ripple effects.

The researchers also call for more work tracking how these patterns develop over time, since early adolescence is a moving target.

Research findings are available online in the journal Frontiers in Education.

The original story "Boys are more driven while girls lead in compassion and empathy, study finds" is published in The Brighter Side of News.

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