Parents' and children's empathy and prosocial behavior

Abstract

Parents' and children's empathy and prosocial behavior SHIGEO SAKURAI (Nara University of Education) The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations among parents' and the children' s empathy and prosocial behavior. Two hundred and twenty-five fifth-graders were asked to assess their and their parents' empathy and prosocial behavior using a new questionnaire. The fathers' empathy scores were highly related to their prosocial behavior scores. This relation applied to mothers' and the children's scores. The scores of parents' empathy and prosocial behavior also moderately related to those of the children's empathy and prosocial behavior. Raters' sex differences were found in relations of 1) mothers' empathy and prosocial behavior, 2) children's empathy and prosocial behavior, 3) mothers' empathy and the children's empathy, and 4) mothers' empathy and the children's prosocial behavior. These relations were higher in boys' rating than in girls' rating. The results suggest that the cognition of relations among parents' and the children's empathy and prosocial behavior may be more complicated in girls than in boys.