Parental Empathy, Psychological Control and Child Maladjustment: An Evaluation of the Nest Parent Education and Support Program

Empathy has long been an important component of a variety of prevention and intervention programs, such as violence prevention (Grossman et al., 1997), anger management therapy (Pecukonis, 1990) and parenting prevention for child abuse and neglect (Bavolek, Kline, McLaughlin, & Publicover, 1979) because lack of empathy is considered to cause aggression (Miller & Eisenberg, 1988). Although the definition of empathy varied from study to study, it is usually considered to have two components: affective component and cognitive component (Vachon, Lynam, & Johnson, 2013; Stern, Borelli, & Smiley, 2014). Affective component, usually termed as sympathy (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987), empathetic concerns (Davies, 1983), means the automatic emotion with others’ emotion (Stern et al., 2014). Cognitive component, usually termed as perspective taking (Davies, 1983), means the intellectual ability of understanding others’ emotions by taking others’ perspectives (Stern et al., 2014). Although empathy has been the target of lots of prevention and intervention programs, few studies have examined if these programs change individual empathy level. This current study is going to examine if parental empathy changes after the intervention, Nest Parent Education and Support Program, using multiple measures of empathy (Aim 1). We are also going to measure if an important aspect of parenting: parental psychological control and child maladjustment change as a result of this program. In addition, we are interested if parental psychological control mediates the relation between parental empathy and child maladjustment (Aim 2).