From parental personality over parental styles to children psychopathic tendencies

Abstract

We examined the role of parental personality traits and parenting styles in explaining psychopathic tendencies in children at the beginning of elementary school. One hundred seventy-three parents fulfilled the Big Five Inventory and Parenting Styles Questionnaire for themselves and Child Problematic Traits Inventory for their children (80 boys; M = 5.28 years, SD = 4.12 months). Results revealed a complex interplay between parental personality traits, parenting styles, and children’s psychopathic tendencies. Overall, two path analyses revealed that parental Psychopathy Resemblance Index (PRI) has both direct and indirect effects on children psychopathy; parental Agreeableness has both direct and indirect negative effects; Neuroticism through the authoritarian and permissive parenting styles has a positive indirect effect; Openness has a direct negative, while Extraversion has a direct positive effect on children’s psychopathic tendencies. Thus, the permissive and authoritarian parenting styles are modelled by parental personality, and they both seem to play an important role in children’s psychopathic tendencies. However, all observed effects were small, which can have important implications for early interventions.