Do parenting styles influence bullying through moral disengagement? Evidence from psychosocially at-risk Colombian adolescents

Research on parenting styles and attachment experiences has paid little attention to the dimensions of moral development. It is, therefore, interesting to explore the relationship between parenting styles, internal working models of attachment, and the development of moral skills, in terms of moral disengagement. The study involved 307 young people (aged 19-25 years), and the dimensions examined were: parental styles (measured by the PSDQ: Tagliabue et al., 2014); attachment styles (ECR: Picardi et al., 2002); moral disengagement (MDS: Caprara et al., 2006). Results showed that the authoritative parenting style is negatively correlated with the two measures of attachment styles (anxiety and avoidance) and moral disengagement. The authoritarian and permissive styles are positively correlated with the two measures of attachment styles (anxiety and avoidance) and moral disengagement. Results also revealed a significant indirect effect of the authoritative style (b = −0.433, 95% BCa, CI [−0.882, −0.090]) and authoritarian style (b = −0.661, 95% BCa, CI [.230, 1.21]) on moral disengagement through anxiety. A serial mediation of anxiety and avoidance on the relationship between permissive style and moral disengagement (b = .077, 95% BCa, CI [.0006, .206]) is significant.

To explore the relationship between parenting style and bystander's promotion of cyberbullying among Chinese college students, as well as the mediating effect of neuroticism and moral disengagement. A total of 495 college students were selected as participants in this study. The short form Egna Minnen av. Barndoms Uppfostran for Chinese, the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Short Scale for Chinese, Moral Disengagement Scale and Cyberbullying Bystanders Behaviors Questionnaire were used to conduct the test. The results showed that: (1) rejection was positively correlated with neuroticism, moral disengagement and bystander's promotion of cyberbullying; Emotional warmth was negatively correlated with neuroticism, moral disengagement and bystander's promotion of cyberbullying. Neuroticism and moral disengagement were positively correlated with bystander's promotion of cyberbullying. (2) The mediating effect analysis showed that the direct effect of parenting style (rejection and emotional warmth) on the bystander's promotion of cyberbullying was significant. In the relationship between parenting style (rejection and emotional warmth) and bystander's promotion of cyberbullying, the mediating effect of neuroticism and moral disengagement and the chain mediating effect of neuroticism and moral disengagement were significant.

Harsh parental discipline and school bullying among Chinese adolescents: The role of moral disengagement and deviant peer affiliation

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationship between parental emotional warmth and overprotective parenting styles in relation to children’s experiences of school bullying, focusing on the chain mediating roles of social support and cognitive reappraisal. The study emphasizes the theoretical contribution of integrating these mechanisms, particularly within the Chinese cultural context, to advance understanding of bullying prevention strategies.MethodologyA survey-based design was employed with a sample of 566 primary school students aged 10 to 13. Validated scales were used to measure parental emotional warmth, overprotective parenting, social support, cognitive reappraisal, and school bullying. Pearson correlation and path analysis were conducted to explore the direct and indirect effects of parenting styles on bullying victimization, with particular attention to the chain mediation model involving social support and cognitive reappraisal.FindingsResults indicate that parental emotional warmth significantly enhances children’s social support and cognitive reappraisal abilities, which in turn reduces the likelihood of experiencing school bullying. In contrast, overprotective parenting negatively affects these mediators, increasing the risk of bullying victimization. Further analysis revealed that social support and cognitive reappraisal jointly mediate the relationship between parenting styles and school bullying, highlighting a chain-mediating mechanism. These findings provide new insights into how family dynamics influence bullying outcomes, particularly within the Chinese cultural context.ImplicationsThis study provides valuable insights for family education programs and school-based anti-bullying interventions, emphasizing the importance of promoting supportive and autonomy-enhancing parenting practices. By fostering social support networks and encouraging positive emotion regulation strategies, stakeholders—including educators, parents, and policymakers—can work collaboratively to mitigate school bullying and strengthen children’s resilience. This research highlights the need for culturally specific approaches in addressing school bullying and enhancing adolescent development in China.

The increasing prevalence of cyberbullying alongside school bullying has raised significant concerns, prompting a deeper examination of their interconnected dynamics. This study aims to investigate the impact of outsider behavior in school bullying on the perpetration of cyberbullying, as well as the mediating roles of anxiety and moral disengagement. This study surveyed 705 young students from schools in China, with an average age of 21.66 years (SD = 1.97), using the Bullying Participant Behavior Questionnaire, the Cyber Aggression Involvement Scale, the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, and the Moral Disengagement Scale. Of these participants, 346 (49.08%) were male, and 359 (50.92%) were female. The results reveal that school bullying outsider behavior significantly predicts cyberbullying perpetration behavior. Additionally, anxiety and moral disengagement partially mediate the relationship between school bullying outsider behavior and cyberbullying perpetration behavior. Furthermore, anxiety and moral disengagement play chain mediating roles in the pathway from school bullying outsider behavior to cyberbullying perpetration behavior. The results suggest that future cyberbullying prevention programs should prioritize individuals who exhibit outsider behavior in school bullying to prevent a significant increase in cyberbullying perpetrators, which could otherwise lead to the widespread proliferation of cyberbullying.

This study examined the relation between moral disengagement and different self-reported and peer-nominated positions in school bullying. The aims of this study were to (1) investigate moral disengagement among children for whom self-reported and peer-nominated bully status diverged and (2) compare levels of disengagement among self-reported and peer-nominated pure bullies, pure victims, bully-victims, and children not involved in bullying. A sample of 739 Danish sixth grade and seventh grade children (mean age 12.6) was included in the study. Moral disengagement was measured using a Danish version of the Moral Disengagement Scale and bullying was measured using both self-reports and peer nominations. Results revealed that both self-reported and peer-nominated bullying were related to moral disengagement, and that both pure bullies and bully-victims displayed higher moral disengagement than outsiders. Discrepancies between self-reported and peer-nominated bullying involvement indicates that a person's social reputation has a stronger association with moral disengagement than so far expected. Implications are discussed, highlighting the importance of further research and theory development.

Researching mechanisms for treating childhood obesity is necessary for preventing associated health risks. One mechanism of change may be parental feeding styles, which may promote overweight in children. Permissive feeding style (high responsiveness, low demands) may result in child’s eating behaviors of eating quickly or being a picky eater. Authoritarian feeding style (high demands, low responsiveness) may result in children having control issues around food. Authoritative feeding styles (high demands and responsiveness) are characterized by appropriate eating behaviors. The goal of this study is to explore health outcomes of parenting styles. Procedure Data was collected via questionnaire from 2008-2010 CARDIAC Kindergarten, 2nd, 5th and 8th grade parents after participating in a statewide school-based health screening.1252 parents participated out of 8135 (15.4%) eligible parents. Parenting style questions resulted in 4 parenting styles: disengaged (6.8%), permissive (32.7%), authoritarian (4.2%), and authoritative (56.2%). Parent and Child Nutrition items were developed from USDA guidelines that include daily intake of fruits and vegetable subgroups of dark green, orange, legumes, and other vegetables. CDC epi info software calculated age and gender adjusted Body Mass Index (BMI) percentiles. Results 50.6% of the students were female, 93.8% Caucasian, 30.3% overweight or obese. Parenting style was associated with parent (p = .003), and child nutrition (p = .002); Figure 1. Specifically, authoritative differed from disengaged (p = .02 for parent, p = .01 for child) and permissive styles (p = .06 for parent, p = 0.01 for child). There was an effect of mean rank for BMI percentile across parenting styles (p = .047); children with permissive parents tended to be heavier than those with authoritative (p = .043). Discussion Improved outcomes among authoritative parents compared to permissive parents may suggest a venue for intervening on changeable parental behaviors in order to improve child health outcomes.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between parental marital conflict and adolescent school bullying, and the chain mediating roles of deviant peer affiliation and moral disengagement. Children’s Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale, Moral Disengagement Scale, Deviant Peer Affiliation Scale, and Bully Questionnaire were used to measure and assess 1067 adolescents (M age = 16.35; SD age = 1.35) in eastern, central, and western regions of China. The results found that: (1) parental marital conflict significantly and positively predicted the prevalence of school bullying among adolescents. (2) Deviant peer affiliation and moral disengagement acted as a chain mediating role between parental marital conflict and school bullying. The study answers the two questions of whether parental conflict predicts school bullying among adolescents and how it causes school bullying. The study offers valuable insights and actionable recommendations for fostering a positive family atmosphere and addressing school bullying through effective interventions.

To examine the moderating effects of individual, family, and social factors on the relationship between adolescent exposure to media violence and attitudes towards school bullying. A cross-sectional study. A total of 473 middle and high school students participated in a self-reported survey between August and October 2016. Self-reported questionnaires were used to measure perceived aggression, resilience, parental violence experience, parenting styles, satisfaction with school life, teacher attitudes towards school bullying, media violence exposure, and adolescent attitudes towards school bullying. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and hierarchical multiple regression. Resilience (an individual factor; β=-0.48, p=.049) and parenting styles (a family factor; β=-0.77, p=.045) moderated the negative influence of media violence exposure on adolescent attitudes towards school bullying. The findings indicated that higher individual resilience and parents with more positive parenting styles could reduce the harmful effects of media violence exposure on adolescent attitudes towards school bullying. The teachers' attitudes towards school bullying (a school factor) contributed to predicting the adolescents' attitudes towards school bullying. However, no moderating effect of school factors was found. Resilience and parenting styles are important socio-ecological factors influencing the relationship between adolescent exposure to media violence and attitudes towards school bullying. Three types of intervention programmes can be suggested based on the results of this study. Reinforcing individual resilience and positive parenting styles should be considered important in developing intervention programmes targeted at eliminating the adverse effects of media violence exposure. Intervention programmes to develop parenting styles to increase the resilience of adolescents can also be considered. Lastly, programmes to screen for adverse outcomes of media violence exposure, low resilience, and poor parenting styles need to be developed.

BACKGROUND: Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) survivors are at a higher risk for obesity and overweight than even the general pediatric population. Obesity risk has been linked to certain parenting (permissive and authoritarian) styles and to lack of parental support for weight-related behaviors. We thus sought to evaluate the potential contribution of parenting behaviors and styles to weight related issues and depression among overweight and obese children who have survived ALL. METHODS: Surveys on parenting styles, behaviors, communication styles, and parental support for weight management behaviors were performed by the primary parents of overweight and obese youth recruited for a clinical trial of a weight management program among childhood ALL survivors aged 8-18 years at three tertiary care pediatric institutions. In addition, the Childhood Depression Inventory was performed by the recruited children and baseline demographics from both children and parents were collected. Distribution and correlation analyses of survey results and collected baseline data were performed. RESULTS: Thirty five overweight (20%) and obese (80%) children recruited to date comprised 43% male, median (IQR) age of 13 (10,16) years, median BMI % of 98 (95,99)% and 89% Hispanic. The corresponding primary parent population consisted of 89% women, median age of 42 (38,48) years, median BMI of 33 (28,40) kg/m2 (60% obese, 26% overweight), and 89% Hispanic. While the majority (97%) of parents reported an authoritative parenting style, there were variations in the amount of permissive and dysfunctional parenting reported. Parenting verbosity in reaction to misbehavior was moderately associated with increased baseline child BMI percentile (r=0.37, p=0.03). Authoritarian parenting style moderately correlated with parental support for physical activity (specifically walking and biking) for the entire cohort (r=0.36, p=0.03). However, overall, parenting styles did not specifically correlate with support for weight management behaviors or with age and gender-matched child BMI percentiles. Parental over-reactivity correlated with higher child depression rating scores (r=0.35, p=0.04) while parental granting of autonomy was associated with lower depression rating scores (r=-0.35, p<0.04) in the cohort. DISCUSSION: We did not observe a preponderance of parenting styles associated with greater weight status in children among overweight and obese youth with ALL. However, specific parenting styles and behaviors were related to child weight status, parental weight management support, and depression ratings among overweight and obese ALL child survivors. These data confirm the important role of parents in weight management among young childhood ALL survivors. Citation Format: Jeannie S. Huang, Laura Terrones, Maria Chang, Lindsay Dillon. Parenting considerations in the management of overweight and obese childhood ALL survivors. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1368. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-1368

Parental educational styles have a significant effect in personal development. These styles (authoritative, democratic, permissive and neglectful) can be related to affects and social skills at the individual level. The study presented here, which comprised 456 participants (151 men; 33.11%), with an average age of 22.01 years (s.d. = 2.80), aimed to analyse the relationship between parental styles, affects and social skills, as well as the role played by affects in the relationship between parental style and social skills. The results suggest that the constructs under study are closely related. The most common parental style is democratic. By gender, permissive styles were more often applied to women and authoritative styles to men. No significant gender differences were found in the application of democratic and neglectful parental styles. In terms of emotional support, women were found to have higher negative affect scores and men higher emotional support scores. People with parents that use democratic and permissive styles scored higher in all variables related to affects and social skills, which challenges the notion that democratic styles are the best parental styles in terms of socialisation of children. The results of the affect and social skills scales were analysed in relation to parenting styles, indicating that children educated under a democratic parental regime tend to yield higher scores in terms of social skills than children educated under any other form of parental regime and medium scores in terms of affects. Finally, it was found that parenting styles have a direct influence on social skills, which tend to improve when affects play a mediating role between these two constructs. These results suggest that parenting styles are closely related to affects and social skills. In addition, they also suggest that affects play a mediating role in the relationship between parenting styles and social skills. Finally, owing to the impact that parenting styles have on affects and social skills, more research is needed to address this issue.

This study examines how different roles in school bullying (e.g., bullies, victims, defenders) vary in cognitive and affective empathy and moral disengagement. Findings from this study revealed that levels of empathy and moral disengagement differed significantly among bullying groups for 702 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students in the United States. An analysis of variance showed differential patterns between bullying groups and outcome variables (i.e., cognitive and affective empathy and moral disengagement). In addition, the correlation between moral disengagement and empathy was statistically significant and negative. Affective empathy and cognitive empathy both significantly predicted moral disengagement; with every one unit increase in moral disengagement, affective empathy decreased by .38 and cognitive empathy decreased by .39. Students who scored higher in moral disengagement tended to score lower in empathy. The current findings confirm and extend the literature on the relation between moral disengagement, empathy, prosociality, and victimising behaviour. This information can inform school-wide and targeted intervention efforts.

Most left-behind children in rural China are raised by their grandparents, whose parenting style significantly impacts children's development. This study examined the association between grandparents' violent discipline and left-behind children's school bullying. This cross-sectional study recruited a sample of 462 left-behind children aged 10 to 15 years old (Age Mean = 12.372, 49.351% girls) from four rural primary and junior high schools in Chongqing, China. There was a significant positive association between corporal punishment (β = .236, p < .001) and psychological aggression (β = .272, p < .001) of grandparents and children's school bullying. Empathy and moral disengagement mediate the above association. Cross-gender comparisons indicated that corporal punishment had a greater positive relationship with school bullying in boys than girls (βgirls = .154, p < .01; βboys = .250, p < .001). At the same time, boys' moral disengagement was also more likely to lead to school bullying (βgirls = .233, p < .001; βboys = .337, p < .001). We discuss the implications of these findings for preventing bullying in schools for children left behind.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy were related to defending, unconcerned bystanding, and guilty bystanding in school bullying among pre-adolescent students. In this study, 1168 pre-adolescent students from 74 upper elementary classrooms in 31 schools in Sweden completed a series of self-report scales. Through structural equation modeling, the study found that defending was positively associated with defender self-efficacy and negatively associated with moral disengagement. Unconcerned bystanding was negatively associated with defender self-efficacy and positively associated with moral disengagement. Finally, guilty bystanding was negatively associated with defender self-efficacy and moral disengagement.

To explore the direct and indirect effect of the personality meta-traits 'Stability' and 'Plasticity' on moral reasoning among nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs). Moral reasoning is influenced by being prone to moral disengagement and personality traits. Moral disengagement is observed among professionals in many fields, including healthcare providers. Moral disengagement is known to be provoked by environmental stressors and influenced by certain personality traits. A cross-sectional approach was used including self-report questionnaires. A convenience sample of Dutch NPs (N=67) and PAs (N=88) was surveyed via online questionnaires between January and March 2015, using (a) the Defining Issues Test; (b) the BIG five inventory; and (c) the Moral Disengagement Scale. Structural equationmodelling (SEM) was employed for estimating the construct validity of two meta-traits of personality and to test unidirectional influences on moral reasoning. Only the Stability trait was a direct predictor of moral reasoning whereas both Stability and Plasticity were precursors of moral disengagement. Both personality meta-traits had statistically significant indirect effects on moral reasoning through a low level of moral disengagement. The influence of both personality traits on the level of moral reasoning was increased by strong self-censure on entering into morally disengaged interactions. The personality meta-trait 'Stability' is an indicator of moral reasoning and is explained by a lower propensity to morally disengage among highly stable people. Although the meta-trait Plasticity exerts an indirect effect through moral disengagement on moral reasoning, it is not a direct indicator of moral reasoning.