A large body of research has shown that parents play a vital role in the development of adolescents' depression. However, previous research has overlooked the effects of a potentially critical factor, namely, parental perceptions, and beliefs about adolescents' depression. The present study examined whether parental perceptions of an adolescent's depressive symptoms predict longitudinal changes in adolescents' symptoms (i.e., the parental perception effect). The longitudinal relationship between adolescents' depressive symptoms and parental perceptions of the adolescents' symptoms was analyzed in three independent groups of parent-adolescent pairs (in total N = 1,228). Parental perception and monitoring effects were found in Studies 1B and 2 only in the depressive mood subscale. While a decreased enjoyment subscale showed a perception effect in Study 1A, we obtained null results from other studies. We synthesized the results by applying meta-analytic structural equation modeling to obtain a more robust estimate. The analysis qualified both perception and monitoring effects in both subscales. Our results suggest that when parents believe that their adolescent child is depressed, adolescents are cognitively biased by their parental perceptions over time, resulting in more severe depressive symptoms.
Public Significance StatementThis series of three two-wave studies suggests that when parents perceive their adolescent children are depressed, these perceptions may be transmitted to adolescents over time, relating to an increased depressive mood. Our results suggest that parents should avoid worrying excessively about their children's mental health.
Psychopathy is personality traits, which is consisted of primary psychopathy characterized by affective and interpersonal problems and secondary psychopathy characterized by behavioral problems. Prior researchers have suggested that people with psychopathy have peculiar attention, which prevents them from detecting information peripheral to their concern, and we hypothesized that this explains their low empathy. Based on these reasoning, the present study assessed whether attention moderates the relationship between psychopathy and affective empathy. Eighty-five undergraduates (40 men and 45 women; mean age = 19.8 years; SD = 1.6) completed the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and a perceptual load task. Hierarchical regression showed that a significant moderation effect was found: primary psychopathy was negatively associated with affective empathy, among those with reduced interference from task-irrelevant stimuli under a medium level of perceptual load. Future study should need to replicate this finding with clinical population.
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