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First published online October 9, 2009

Perceived Maternal Control and Responsiveness to Distress as Predictors of Young Adults’ Empathic Responses

Michal Kanat-Maymon and Avi AssorView all authors and affiliations
Volume 36, Issue 1
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209347381

Abstract

Two studies examined the relations between young adults’ empathic responding and their perceptions of two maternal behaviors. As predicted from self-determination theory, perceived maternal control had unique negative associations with empathic support of one’s romantic partner (indicated by both self-reports and partner reports) and with empathic concern for others in general, and a unique positive association with personal distress in response to others in need. Perceived maternal responsiveness to distress was a unique positive predictor of empathic concern. The findings suggest that the experience of one’s mother as controlling is likely to interfere with one’s empathic responding and that high levels of perceived maternal responsiveness do not cancel the negative effects of the experience of controlling parenting. Furthermore, the findings suggest that high levels of perceived maternal responsiveness might exacerbate the negative relations between perceived maternal control and personal distress in response to others in need.

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1.
1. Psychological control is often assessed by a measure refined by Barber (1996) that captures parental behaviors involving parents’ coercing their children into complying with their expectations by intruding on their children’s psychological world using means such as guilt induction and love withdrawal. From an SDT perspective, although the construct of psychological control refers to important aspects of parental control, it leaves out other important forms of autonomy suppression such as conditional positive regard (see Assor & Roth, 2005; Roth et al., 2009) and direct attempts to pressure children to comply (e.g., Assor, Kaplan, et al., 2005).
2.
2. It is important to note that our predictions concerning the more problematic pattern of correlates of parental control at higher levels of parental responsiveness do not necessarily imply that offspring reporting high levels of both parental control and parental responsiveness would be less empathic and more personally distressed than offspring reporting high control but low responsiveness. This is because in addition to an interactive effect, we also predicted a main effect of parental responsiveness (and, of course, a main effect of parental control).
3.
3. Baumrind (1971) defined the authoritarian parenting style as involving parents’ valuing strict obedience and compliance, attempting to shape and control their child in accordance with their standards, and discouraging give and take. From an SDT perspective, the authoritarian style clearly involves high levels of parental control and autonomy suppression (Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997).

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Published In

Volume 36, Issue 1
Pages: 33 - 46
Article first published online: October 9, 2009
Issue published: January 2010

Keywords

  1. empathy
  2. self-determination theory
  3. parental control
  4. parental responsiveness to child distress
  5. romantic relationships Received July 12
  6. 2008
  7. revision accepted June 3
  8. 2009

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© 2010 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
PubMed: 19820178

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Michal Kanat-Maymon
Bar Ilan University, Israel
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Avi Assor
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, [email protected]
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