Associations of Experienced Parenting Style and Empathy Among Male Offenders in China

Abstract

Background: Parenting style has an important influence on the development of individuals and has been associated with empathy. The present study aimed to investigate different parenting style factors in childhood and adolescence and associated cognitive and affective empathy among offenders, which may help to inform effective intervention strategies to improve empathy.Methods: A total of 994 prisoners were selected for their parents being the caregivers whose caregivers were fathers and mothers, used the Parental Bonding Instrument to collect information on the parenting styles they experienced in childhood and adolescence, and used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index to evaluate their empathy. Multivariable linear regression analysis was conducted to explore associations between different parenting style factors and the empathy of offenders, and one-way multivariate analysis of variance and a t-test was used to explore the differences in cognitive and affective empathy with different degrees of parenting style factors.Results: The parental care and control factors in childhood and adolescence had a significantly greater influence on the empathy of offenders than the parental encouragement factor. There were different associations between parental care and control factors and offenders’ empathy depending on whether the parenting styles were consistent or inconsistent. When the parenting styles were consistent, different degrees of parental care had a significantly influence on the cognitive and affective empathy while different degrees of parental control only had a significantly influence on the affective empathy of offenders. And when the parenting styles were inconsistent, different degrees of paternal and maternal control had an association with the cognitive and affective empathy of offenders.Conclusion: Different parenting style factors experienced in childhood and adolescence had different associations with the empathy of offenders. Different degrees of parenting style factors also had different predictive effects on offenders’ cognitive and affective empathy depending on whether the paternal and maternal parenting styles were consistent or inconsistent. Moreover, the parental control factor had a particular influence on the empathy of offenders. Our findings underscore the pressing need for taking preventive monitoring measures or developing policies to improve parenting styles.

The Hidden Danger in Family Environment: The Role of Self-Reported Parenting Style in Cognitive and Affective Empathy Among Offenders

“…This manuscript was released as a pre-print on the Research Square platform: Wang et al (2020) . Associations Between Experienced Parenting Style and Empathy Among Male Offenders in China.…”