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CHILDRENS EMOTIONAL RESPONSIVENESS AND SOCIOMORAL UNDERSTANDING AND ASSOCIATIONS WITH MOTHERS AND FATHERS SOCIALIZATION PRACTICES
PAMELA W. GARNER

George Mason University

ABSTRACT:

Sixty-two preschoolers (55% boys) were presented hypothetical dilemmas about moral transgressions. Responses were evaluated in terms of childrens emotional responsiveness, prosocial motives, and readiness to intervene. Mothers and fathers reported separately on their use of victimoriented inductions, teaching reparations, power assertion, and love withdrawal. Four years later, parents reported on childrens behavioral problems, emotion-regulation ability, and empathy. Mothers reported using more victim-oriented inductions than did fathers, and girls responded with more personal distress and reported more rule-oriented motives. Maternal love withdrawal was a positive predictor of empathy and motives of concern. For fathers, teaching reparations were positively related to childrens sympathy. Interestingly, mothers power assertion was negatively related to sympathy at high levels of fathers power assertion, but not at low levels. Maternal power assertion during the preschool years was negatively associated with childrens long-term empathy scores. School-age outcomes also were meaningfully predicted by earlier sociomoral competence.

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Researchers have long been interested in what parents do to facilitate (or detract from) childrens understanding of right and wrong, empathic awareness, and other prosocial-related behavior. Parents who use high levels of power assertion to elicit compliance or respond to misbehavior tend to have children who have difculty developing empathetic and prosocial tendencies, presumably because they comply with parental requests because of fear of external sanctions rather than an activation of their own internal processing (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994). Parental coercion also can elicit child anger and dysregulation, which could contribute to the impaired development of the social-information-processing skills required for empathy-related responsiveness (Dodge, Bates, & Petit, 1990). Similarly, love withdrawal, which includes expressing disapproval, ignoring, and threatening to take away love and attention, is another disciplinary strategy that has been correlated with negative child outcomes (Hoffman, 2000; Volling, Mahoney, & Rauer, 2009). In contrast, inductions (i.e., reasoning with children about why they should comply) encompass positive parental communication, encourage limit setting, offer appropriate reminders of expectations and rules, and provide explanations about how childrens behaviors affects others (Eisenberg & McNally, 1993; PaulussenI am grateful for the help of Kimberly Estep and Tracy Spirakis who helped to collect this data and deeply indebted to the children and families who participated in this research. Thanks are also due to Lisa Gring-Pemble for commenting on an earlier version of this manuscript. Direct correspondence to: Pamela W. Garner, New Century College, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MSN 5D3, Fairfax, VA 22030; e-mail: pgarner1@gmu.edu.
INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Vol. 33(1), 95106 (2012) C 2012 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI: 10.1002/imhj.20339

Hoogeboom, Stams, Hermanns, & Peetsma, 2007). Still, there are several types of inductions, and there is reason to hypothesize that specic forms may be differentially related to child outcomes. For instance, victim-oriented inductions refer to how the childs behavior has harmed the victim, but do not necessarily provide pedagogical instruction about how to repair the situation (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994); however, victim-oriented inductions are associated with interpersonal understanding, empathy-based guilt (deVeer & Janssens, 1994), and appropriate emotional and prosocial reactions to distress (Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967; Miller, Eisenberg, Fabes, Shell, & Gular, 1989). Inductions aimed at encouraging reparation (e.g., telling the child to apologize for their wrongful behavior; Grusec & Goodnow, 1994) are negatively associated with boys antisocial behavior and positively associated with moral regulation (Kerr, Lopez, Olson, & Sameroff, 2004). With respect to child outcomes and their linkages to parenting, three aspects of childrens sociomoral competence were of interest in the current research: emotional responsiveness, prosocial motives, and readiness to intervene. High levels of moral reasoning and the capacity for empathic responding to others have been associated with the quality of childrens peer and sibling relationships, problem-solving ability, and prosocial behavior (Chapman, Zahn-Waxler, Cooperman, & Iannotti, 1987; Costin & Jones, 1992; Dunn, Brown, & Maguire, 1995; Dunn & Herrera, 1997; Feldman, 2007; Howe, Cate, Brown, & Hadwin, 2008). On the other hand, moral cognitions characterized by aggression and denial are related to negative peer interactions and a lack of prosocial action (Garner, 1996; Wan & Green, 2010). Researchers now believe that work on sociomoral competence could be guided by the literature on childrens reasoning about

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mental states. Mental state understanding is a broad construct that describes the ability to reect upon the beliefs, desires, emotions, and/or intentions of the self and others (Symons, 2004). There are conceptual and empirical reasons to consider that mental state understanding may underlie empathy-related cognitions and emotions. First, sociomoral reasoning involves knowledge of mental states and the rules that govern social behavior (Wellman & Miller, 2006). Second, some understanding of mental states is necessary before children can display empathy-related behavior in response to those states (Sharp, 2008). Third, responding favorably and appropriately to a distressed other requires a desire to respond in a way that is in the best interest of the other and not the self (Moore & Macgillivray, 2004). Indeed, reasoning about ones own desires, beliefs, intentions, or emotions (Krahn & Fenton, 2009) factors into the decision to choose a particular emotional or prosocial response (Sokol, Chandler, & Jones, 2004). Research has been consistent with these views. For example, moral reasoning often begins with an analysis of the mental states responsible for that action (Cushman, 2008). In addition, children exposed to higher levels of discourse about mental states, such as needs, intention, and desires, engage in more empathyrelated behavior than do other children (Garner & Dunsmore, 2011). Moreover, aggressive children, a group considered low in empathy, have more difculty understanding the mental states of others than do nonaggressive children (Baird & Astington, 2004; McKeough, Yates, & Marini, 1994). However, mental state understanding has been positively associated with aggression that involves social manipulation of a victim (Renouf et al., 2010). Although parental discipline has been well-studied in relation to sociomoral development, the present study was unique in that both mothers and fathers were included. Mothers and fathers parenting styles are relatively unrelated in early childhood (van IJzendoorn & De Wolff, 1997). In addition, fathers may be more power assertive (Hart & Robinson, 1994) and more likely than are mothers to ignore childrens affect, particularly when it is negative (Garside & Klimes-Dougan, 2003). Children also are more likely to comply with directives given by their fathers (Feldman & Klein, 2003). Still, similar mechanisms may operate to link mothers and fathers parenting to childrens development, such that when either is positive, warm, and responsive, more optimal child outcomes are observed (Parke, 1995). For instance, both mothers and fathers victim-oriented inductions are associated with childrens interpersonal understanding (deVeer & Janssens, 1994). At the same time, it was predicted that aspects of mothers and fathers parenting would be uniquely and independently related to different components of childrens socioemotional competence. For example, the positive expressivity of mothers, but not fathers, is associated with childrens emotion regulation (Valiente, Fabes, Eisenberg, & Spinrad, 2004). In addition, diminished prosocial behavior in preschoolers has been linked to negative emotional displays from fathers, but not mothers (Carson & Parke, 1996). More central to the present study is that victim-oriented inductions are correlated with sociomoral development, peer-related competence, and prosocial behavior for mothers, but not for fathers (Hart,

DeWolf, Wozniak, & Burts, 1992; Hoffman, & Saltzstein, 1967). Finally, although research has been clear in demonstrating positive associations between parental inductions and childrens sociomoral competence, the amount of variance accounted for in previous studies has been relatively low. The present study adopts a withinfamily perspective and considers the interactive effects of mothers and fathers parenting on childrens sociomoral competence.
LINKING PARENTING AND EARLY SOCIOMORAL COMPETENCE TO LATER SOCIOEMOTIONAL COMPETENCE

This research also was concerned with whether early moral competence predicted later empathy-related responsiveness, emotion regulation, and adaptive social functioning. Poor sociomoral development in the early years may render children vulnerable to later emotion dysregulation and inappropriate social behavior (Campbell, 1995). Moreover, empathy-related responsiveness may operate to help individuals satisfy hedonic needs and to facilitate compliance with social rules and norms for emotional expression and behavior (Koole, 2009). Finally, expressions of empathy or sympathy from another may operate to validate childrens emotional reactions, but also demonstrate that it is possible to experience distress without becoming overaroused by the emotioneliciting event. Moreover, children who consistently interact with a sympathetic other may have greater opportunities to internalize the lessons being taught by the other, which may strengthen their long-term capacity for managing their own emotion (Paivio & Laurent, 2001). It was expected that empathy and sympathy responses would be associated with childrens ability to understand and react to sociomoral emotions, which may contribute to longterm behavioral regulation more generally and later emotion regulation more specically. A few studies have examined linkages among sociomoral understanding, behavioral functioning, and emotion regulation. This earlier work has shown that children with externalizing problems have difculty understanding the emotional consequences of moral transgressions (Arsenio & Fleiss, 1996), and are more likely to misinterpret the moral transgressions of a friend and less likely to intervene on the friends behalf than are other children (Hughes, White, Sharpen, & Dunn, 2000). Correlations between self-serving moral reasoning and internalizing symptoms also have been found (Barriga, Morrison, Liau, & Gibbs, 2001). Conversely, indicators of moral competence are associated with childrens constructive anger reactions (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1995) and coping skills (Eisenberg et al., 1996). In addition, morally and emotionally regulated children may be more accepting of their own emotions and more effective in responding to others when emotionally aroused than are other children (Block-Lerner, Adair, Plumb, Rhatigan, & Oraillo, 2007). Regarding parenting, Kochanska, Aksan, and Joy (2007) recently reported that positive mothechild (but not fatherchild) relationships longitudinally predicted positive sociomoral development. In this research, fathers power assertion was associated with negative developmental outcomes, although these linkages

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were moderated by child temperament. Power assertive parenting, when administered with low emotional involvement, also has longitudinally predicted increased child behavior problems (Towe-Goodman & Teti, 2008). Interestingly, this same research has demonstrated that power assertion accompanied by high emotional involvement is predictive of increased child socioemotional competence. Finally, girls whose parents use high levels of love withdrawal tend to show more depressive symptoms than do other girls (Mandara & Pikes, 2008). Thus, it was predicted that positive parenting practices would be positively related to optimal child outcomes whereas negative parenting practices were expected to be associated with diminished sociomoral outcomes at both the preschool and school-age time points. In sum, the main objectives of this research are threefold: (a) to examine linkages between parenting and preschool childrens sociomoral competence and to investigate whether these associations vary by sex of parent; (b) to examine linkages between parenting and preschool and school-age childrens moral, behavioral, and emotional competence, and to consider whether these differences vary by sex of parent; and (c) to explore whether early sociomoral competence predicts later moral, behavioral, and emotional competence.

of the fathers completed the Socialization of Moral Affect Questionnaire (Rosenberg, Tangney, Denham, Leonard, & Widmaier, 1994). At the follow-up, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983), Shields and Cicchettis (1997) Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC), and the Empathy scale developed by Kochanska and her colleagues were mailed to the parents. Parents were instructed to mail completed questionnaires back in already addressed and stamped envelopes.
Child Measures

METHOD Participants

Sixty-three American preschool children (35 boys; M age = 53.17 months, SD = 9.6 months) and their parents were recruited to participate in the study through advertisements placed in local newspapers in a large city in the Southwestern United States. Fiftyve percent of the children were boys. The average age of the mothers was 33.14 years (SD = 4.7 years), and 95% had a college degree. The average age of the fathers was 35.98 years (SD = 4.97 years), and 92% had a college degree. The ethnic backgrounds of the families were White (77%), Latino American (15%), and Black (6%). An additional 2% of the families reported their ethnicity as Other. Four years later, attempts were made to locate the families for a follow-up study. Of the initial 63 children, 46 were located. One family was not interested in participating in the follow-up. This number represented 74% of the original sample. Attrition was due to our inability to locate the family (25%) and parent refusal (1%). Children participating in the follow-up study did not differ from nonparticipating children on demographic or other family measures, including parental education (both mother and father), number of hours worked per week, ethnicity, parents marital status, or distribution of child gender.
Procedure

Each child was presented four vignettes designed to reect situations in the childs everyday experience: Another child threatened to push target child off of the jungle gym, an antagonist child on the playground chased and roared at target child, another child falsely accused target child of stealing a toy, and target childs ball was stolen by another child who refused to return it. Vignettes were presented in random order and with the help of gender-appropriate drawings, accompanied by audiotaped recordings of the situation. Appropriate vocal and affective cues were given in the recording, but facial expressions of the characters were left blank in the drawings. Before the assessment, each child was shown drawings of facial expressions of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, sorry, or neutral (Eisenberg et al., 1988). The examiner identied each expression and gave a simple denition for each. Next, children were asked to label the expressions, after which the examiner displayed the faces a third time and correctly identied each expression. Children were instructed to assume the perspective of the target child and asked a series of questions after each story: How do you feel now that you have heard the story? Why do you feel this way? How do you think the [target] child in the story feels? What would you do next? Why would you [do the proposed strategy]? If there was no initial response, children were reminded that they were a character in the story and then asked Do you think that there is anything to say or do now? If no response was given, children were provided with a nal prompt: If for some reason you could do or say something now, what would it be? Three variables were scored: emotional responsiveness, readiness to intervene, and prosocial motives. Because of the nature of the scoring, prosocial motives are discussed rst.
Prosocial Motives

At the preschool period, each child was interviewed individually in a quiet room in a psychology department laboratory. Children were presented several emotion-eliciting vignettes. All mothers and 58

Childrens motives for intervening (i.e., prosocial motives) were evaluated from responses to the Why would you [do the proposed strategy]? question. Responses were coded as concern for others, self-referential, rule-oriented, unjustied, or other (see Costin & Jones, 1992). To be scored as concern, the child had to make some reference to the target childs emotional or physical state (e.g., She needs help or He could get hurt). Self-referential was coded if the child referenced his or her own negative feelings or personal distress about the events depicted in the story. Ruleoriented was coded if the childs response reected a concern with social or moral convention (e.g., It isnt fair for someone to steal

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your toys). Responses that provided no rationale for the intervention were coded as unjustied. Story restatements or responses that could not be placed into previously dened categories were recorded as other. In this scheme, concern was conceptualized as the highest motivational response because it involves attention to the mental states of the other, followed by rule-oriented (i.e., authority-based responses), and self-referential responses (Krcmar & Curtis, 2003). Unjustied and other responses were not analyzed for this report.
Emotional Responsiveness

Childrens responses to the following three questions were used to assess emotional responsiveness: How do you feel now that you have heard the story? Why do you feel this way? How do you think the [target] child in the story feels? Responses were coded as: empathy, sympathy, personal distress, unaffected, or other. For scoring, the childs reported affect, the target childs reported affect, and the reason given for the subjects affect were considered. Sympathy was coded when the target child and the children reported their own affect as congruent with that of the target child and the prosocial motive reected concern for the other. In this system, sympathy is thought of as requiring mental-state understanding because it involves arousal in response to the others plight. Empathy was coded when the child stated that his or her own affect and that of the target child were congruent, but prosocial motive given for this response was self-referential, rule-oriented, or unjustied. Empathy was considered a lower level response than was sympathy because it involves attention to the other, but requires very little distinction between the self and the other. On the other hand, it could be argued that sympathy requires some level of mental-state understanding because it suggests arousal in response to that persons plight. If children reported feeling distressed at the affect of the other, but noted that their response to the other was motivated by a desire to relieve their own distress, the response was coded as personal distress. Unaffected was coded if the child indicated that he or she felt okay (i.e., neutral) or happy in the situation, but acknowledged that the target child experienced negative emotion. Responses that could not be coded into these categories were coded as other. Only sympathy, empathy, and personal distress responses were considered for this research.
Readiness to Intervene

tions may indicate that children are having difculty understanding the emotions and other mental states of others (Kaland et al., 2002), separate scores for the rst, second, and third probes were retained. In addition, a Total Readiness Score also was computed by summing the points across the four vignettes (maximum value = 12). The two motive variables (i.e., for emotional responsiveness and prosocial interventions) were computed by calculating the average scores across the four vignettes. Two coders independently coded approximately 25% of the responses, and Cohens coefcients for the measures were computed for emotional response motives ( = .79), readiness to intervene ( = .73), and prosocial intervention motives ( = .87). Validity has been established by the extensive use of the drawings in previous research (Chapman et al., 1987; Costin & Jones, 1992) and by the fact that scores on these measures can meaningfully distinguish between friends and acquaintances (Costin & Jones, 1992).
Parenting Measures

Next, childrens readiness to intervene on the target childs behalf was evaluated. For this measure, childrens responses to the What would you do next? question were considered. Responses were scored on a 3-point scale. Three points were assigned if the child proposed an appropriate intervention after the initial probe. A response was designated as appropriate if it included the terms care, protect, share, help, or love, or some variation of these terms (see Garner, Jones, & Palmer, 1994). If the child responded after the second probe, 2 points were assigned to the response. Finally, if the child responded after the third and nal probe, 1 point was assigned to the response. Because the need for more prompt ques-

The preschool version of the Socialization of Moral Affect Questionnaire (SOMA) was administered to both parents. The SOMA is a scenario-based, pencil-and-paper instrument designed to assess specic parenting practices associated with the socialization of shame, guilt, and other secondary or self-conscious emotions (Rosenberg et al., 1994). Four SOMA subscales were of interest: victim-oriented inductions (six items), teaching reparations (eight items), love withdrawal (eight items), and power assertion (eight items). Sample items from the subscales include Its not fair to cheat because it does not give the other person a chance to win (victim-oriented induction); You need to say youre sorry for cheating, and play by the rules from now on (teaching reparation); I cant even look at you right nowgo to your room (love withdrawal); and Smack your childs hand, then pick him/her up and put him/her in his/her room (power assertion). Parents indicated how likely they would be to react to each scenario on a Likerttype scale from 1 (not at all likely) to 5 (very likely). The s for mothers were .67 for victim-oriented inductions, .79 for teaching reparations, .82 for love withdrawal, and .73 for power assertion. For fathers, s were .62, .78, .74, and .79, respectively. Reliability also has been demonstrated by the fact that parents report similar behaviors on the SOMA when recalling their socialization behaviors when their children were preschoolers and when reporting on their later moral-socialization behaviors (Rosenberg et al., 1994). Regarding validity, parents proneness to experience guilt has been meaningfully related to parents perceptions of their socialization behaviors on the SOMA subscales. The developers of the scale also demonstrated that parents reports of their teaching and victim-oriented inductions are positively associated with their tendency to experience guilt. In addition, when completing a child version of the SOMA, childrens perceptions of their parents socialization behaviors converged with parents SOMA responses (Rosenberg et al., 1994). Fathers responses on the SOMA were meaningfully correlated with parents reported feelings of anger and hostility toward the child (Mills et al., 2007) and mothers

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negative SOMA scores were negatively related to childrens moral competence whereas induction responses were positively associated with empathy-related responsiveness (Volling et al., 2009).
School-Age Outcomes

regulation (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). School-age assessments consisted of parental self-report measures and were chosen to be parallel with the early childhood measures.

Empathy. Parents completed six items from the Empathy/Prosocial Response to Anothers Distress Scale (Kochanska, DeVet, Goldman, Murray, & Putnam, 1994). Sample items include This child will attempt to comfort or reassure another in distress and This child is likely to ask Whats wrong? when seeing another in distress. Parents rated items on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (never true) to 4 (almost always true). The modied subscale demonstrated adequate reliability in this study ( = .67) and in previous research (Smith, 2001). The vignettes used to assess moral competence in the preschool years were not appropriate for use with older children because the scenarios were more focused on aggressive actions and thus were not expected to elicit empathy/prosocial-related responses from older children. As children move into the school years, events that pull for morally relevant responses are more focused on situations that involve ones own or others internal states similar to the ones assessed by the parental report measures used here (Williams & Bybee, 1994). Behavior problems. The Parent Report Form of the CBCL (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983), a reliable index of internalizing and externalizing behavior, was used to assess childrens psychosocial functioning. The externalizing dimension assesses aggressive, antisocial, and undercontrolled behaviors. The mean was 8.78 (SD = 6.53), and Cronbachs was .83. The CBCL also provided the measure of internalizing behavior (fearful, inhibited, and overcontrolled behavior). The mean for the internalizing items was 3.69 (SD = 4.05), and was .79. All items were rated on a scale ranging from not true (0) to very or often true (2). Test-retest reliability is excellent (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983). Internalizing behavior and externalizing behavior were positively related, r (44) = .52, p < .001. Emotional regulation. Mothers also completed the ERC developed by Shields and Cicchetti (1997), which contains 24 items, all indicating how frequently behaviors are observed from rarely/never (1) to almost always (4) and yields two subscale scores: emotion regulation and negativity. Sample items for regulation include Displays appropriate negative affect in response to hostile, aggressive, or intrusive acts by peers and Responds positively to neutral or friendly overtures by peers. Internal consistency was .75. The negativity subscale assesses arousal and anger dysregulation. Sample items include Responds angrily to limit setting by adults and Can bounce back quickly from episodes of upset and distress. Cronbachs was .67. Validity is indicated by the measures ability to distinguish well-regulated children from dysregulated children (Shields & Cicchetti, 1998). The emotion regulation subscale score has been positively associated with sociometric status (Smith, 2001) and academic competence (Shields et al., 2001). ERC scores also are related to observational measures of emotion

RESULTS Preliminary Analyses

Results are presented in four parts. First, descriptive information about the study variables is presented. Second, intercorrelations among the study variables are examined. Next, multiple regression models examine the linkage between parenting and preschoolers sociomoral affect, after rst considering the role of important demographic variables. Finally, linkages between childrens early and later sociomoral competence are considered as is the role of parenting in the long-term prediction of childrens socioemotional competence.

Descriptive Data

Means, standard deviations, and ranges for the study variables are presented in Table 1. Prior to submitting the variables for analyses, distribution of the measures was inspected for normalcy and homogeneity of variance, and appropriate levels of skewness and kurtosis were found. Preliminary analyses revealed that child age was positively associated with empathy, r = .25, p < .05, sympathy, r = .34, p < .01, and rule-oriented motives, r = .25, p < .05. Girls (M = 2.96, SD = 2.24) reported more personal distress reactions (M = 1.82, SD = 1.62), F (1, 60) = 5.40, p < .02, and more rule-oriented motives (M = .32, SD = .68) than did boys (M = .04, SD = .19), F (1, 60) = 4.65, p < .04. Next, a multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to examine differences across mothers and fathers SOMA scores. Parent (mother/father) was included as a repeated factor, and the four types of parental discipline (victim-oriented inductions, teaching reparations, love withdrawal, and power assertion) were the dependent measures. The interaction effect was signicant, Wilkss = .84, F (3, 54) = 3.23, p < .03. Follow-up paired t tests revealed a signicant parent effect for victim-oriented inductions, t (56) = 2.85, p < .01, with mothers reporting a higher frequency (M = 3.75, SD = .62) than did fathers (M = 3.39, SD = .60).

Correlations Among the Preschool Variables

Table 1 also presents the zero-order correlations among the major preschool variables. Childrens sympathy responses were positively related to motives of concern, readiness to intervene, and fathers teaching reparations. Personal distress responses were positively related to self-referential motives and readiness to intervene. Readiness to intervene also was positively related to self-referential motives as well as those of concern. Maternal love withdrawal also was positively associated with motives of concern.

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TABLE 1. Correlations Among Preschool Study Variables

Variables 1. Sympathy 2. Empathy 3. Personal distress 4. Concern 5. Self-referential 6. Rule-oriented 7. Readiness to intervene 8. Maternal inductions 9. Maternal reparations 10. Maternal power assertion 11. Maternal love withdrawal 12. Paternal inductions 13. Paternal reparations 14. Paternal power assertion 15. Paternal love withdrawal M SD Actual range
p

10

11

12

13

14

15

.05 .18 .40 .24 .10 .48 .07 .04 .10 .12 .16 .34 .14 .21 1.46 1.44 04

.17 .18 .21 .03 .10 .19 .18 .03 .02 .01 .06 .03 .13 1.23 1.53 04

.04 .41 .06 .25 .09 .20 .13 .03 .01 .04 .03 .00 2.34 1.99 04

.22 .20 .30 .04 .10 .14 .37 .15 .24 .06 .06 .34 .50 04

.16 .73 .02 .06 .07 .21 .11 .03 .16 .10 .87 .50 04

.06 .01 .04 .11 .18 .06 .01 .02 .04 .20 .19 03

.04 .08 .06 .22 .05 .01 .13 .10 4.17 4.95 012

.32 .05 .23 .02 .09 .15 .15 .07 .08 .03 .25 .05 .05 3.75 3.61 .63 .84 15 25

.61 .05 .19 .40 .12 1.74 .56 14

.01 .12 .21 .20 1.54 .52 13

.57 .06 .04 3.39 .60 15

.19 .28 3.43 .69 25

.53 1.89 .63 14

1.64 .50 13

< .05. p < .01. p < .001.

Regression Analyses

Emotional Responsiveness

The regression analyses examined whether the parenting variables explained additional variance in predicting childrens emotional responsiveness, prosocial motives, and readiness to intervene. Given the earlier ndings, child age and sex were entered as controls. In addition, regressions were computed separately for mothers and fathers to increase power for the ensuing analyses. The combined variance explained by each step and the unique variance explained by each predictor were investigated. In the regressions, there were no problems with multicollinearity, as indicated by the fact that the variance ination factors (a diagnostic procedure used to detect problems with multicollinearity) were within acceptable limits (Graybill & Iyer, 1994).

Sympathy . When the maternal variables were evaluated as predictors of sympathy, the rst step of the model was signicant and accounted for 12% of the variance. Child age was a positive predictor. When the maternal variables were entered on the second step of the regression, only an additional 4% of the variance was explained, and the overall model was not signicant (see Table 2). However, when the paternal variables were included as predictors in a separate regression, the second step was signicant, Fchange (4, 50) = 2.41, p < .058, and accounted for an additional 15% of the variance. Fathers teaching reparations were positively related to sympathy (see Table 3).

TABLE 2. Summary of Regression Analyses for Maternal Variables Predicting Emotional Responsiveness
Sympathy Variable Age Gender Simple inductions Reparations Power assertion Love withdrawal
p

Empathy .34 .07 .02 .01 .21 .23 t 2.01 .44 1.53 1.59 .57 2.18 SE B .02 .38 .31 .24 .43 .45 .25 .06 .19 .21 .09 .33

Personal Distress t .91 2.29 0.17 0.95 1.19 1.08 SE B .03 .49 .42 .33 .59 .61 .11 .29 .17 .13 .19 .17 t 2.73 0.34 2.03 0.16 0.98 SE B 0.02 0.37 0.33 0.33 0,42 .34 .05 .32 .02 .15

T 2.76 .55 .12 .08 1.29 1.47

SE B .02 .25 .31 .24 .43 .45

< .05. p < .01.

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TABLE 3. Summary of Regression Analyses for Paternal Variables Predicting Emotional Responsiveness
Sympathy Variable Age Gender Simple inductions Reparations Power assertion Love withdrawal
p

Empathy .34 0.06 .06 .36 .02 .11 t 1.82 .35 .04 .14 .85 1.08 SE B .02 .42 .44 .42 .40 .53 .24 .05 .01 .03 .14 .18 t

Personal Distress SE B .03 .53 .57 .54 .52 .69 .12 .26 .03 .07 .05 .08 t 2.73 0.34 2.03 0.16 0.98 SE B 0.02 0.37 0.33 0.33 0.42 .34 .05 .32 .02 .15

T 2.44 .39 .41 2.14 .13 .74

SE B .02 .38 .37 .35 .33 .45

.88 1.98 .18 .40 .28 .46

< .05. p < .01.

Empathy . When the contribution of the maternal variables was evaluated as predictors of empathy, the rst step of the model was not signicant, accounting for only 7% of the variance, although age emerged as a signicant positive predictor. However, when the maternal variables were entered on the second step, the overall model was signicant, Fchange (4, 55) = 3.20, p < .02, and accounted for an additional 17% of the variance. Maternal love withdrawal was positively related to empathy (see Table 2). The paternal variables did not explain the additional signicant variance. Personal distress. When the contribution of the maternal variables was evaluated as predictors of personal distress, the rst step of the model that included age and sex was signicant, and accounted for 10% of the variance. Inspection of the coefcients indicated that child sex was a negative predictor. However, when the maternal variables were entered on the second step of the regression, the additional signicant variance was not explained. The paternal variables also did not explain the signicant additional variance in childrens personal distress responses.
Prosocial Motives

TABLE 4. Summary of Regression Analyses for Paternal Variables Predicting Motives of Concerns
Concern (Prediction From Mothers) Variable Simple inductions Reparations Power assertion Love withdrawal 2 Rchange Fchange
p

Concern (Prediction From Fathers) B .02 .28 .03 .06 SE B .23 .21 .20 .28 .02 .25 .03 .04 .06 .52

B .09 .12 .24 .70

SE B .16 .13 .22 .23

.07 .13 .18 .47 .16 2.75

< .05. p < .01.

Motives of concern. For concern, the rst set of regressions included the maternal variables. As before, age and sex were included on the rst step. This model was not signicant and explained only 1% of the variance. However, when the maternal variables were entered on the second step of the regression, the model was significant, Fchange (4, 55) = 3.20, p < .02, and explained an additional 16% of the variance. Maternal love withdrawal was a positive predictor of childrens motives of concern. Paternal variables did not explain unique variance when considered in a separate analysis. In the analyses of rule-oriented and self-referential responses, neither maternal nor paternal variables explained signicant unique variance. Analyses are summarized in Table 4. Readiness to intervene. The rst set of regressions included the maternal variables. As before, age and sex were included on the rst step. This model was not signicant and explained 12% of the variance, F (2, 49) = 4.03, p <.02. However, when the maternal variables were entered on the second step of the regression,

the model was no longer signicant, Fchange (4, 55) = .99, p < .41, and explained only an additional 6% of the variance. The paternal variables did not explain unique variance in readiness to intervene when considered in a separate regression analysis. Previous research also has shown that response latency provides unique information about childrens social cognitive reasoning (Atance, Bernstein, & Meltzoff, 2010). Therefore, childrens responses to each of the individual probes also were analyzed, but results were unchanged.
Interaction of Mothers and Fathers

A second series of regression models was developed to examine the inuence of mothers and fathers combined disciplinary strategies. In these analyses, mothers and fathers discipline were entered along with the Mothers Discipline Fathers Discipline interaction. Variables were centered prior to analyses. There was a signicant interaction for only one of these models. After rst controlling for the effects of age and sex of the child, the main effects of maternal and paternal power assertion and their interaction were entered as predictors. The overall model was signicant, F (5, 51) = 2.40, p < .05, and accounted for an additional 12% of the variance. In addition, the Mother Power Assertion Father

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F (5, 38) = 2.39, p <.05. Maternal power assertion was negatively associated with childrens long-term empathy scores, = .56, p < .05. The paternal variables were not signicant in a separate analysis.
DISCUSSION

FIGURE 1.

Childrens Emotional Responsiveness and Sociomoral Understanding.

Power Assertion interaction was a signicant predictor of childrens sympathy. Simple slopes analyses also were conducted to determine if the slopes were signicantly different from zero. Figure 1 shows that maternal power assertion was negatively related to childrens sympathy scores at high levels of paternal power assertion, b = 1.5, t = 1.83, p < .05, but not at low levels, b = 1.87, n.s.
Preschool Sociomoral Competence Measures and Childrens Long-Term Development

Correlational analyses between the preschool and school-age sociomoral variables demonstrated that later externalizing behavior was negatively associated with preschool sympathy reactions, r (45) = .31, p < .05, and readiness to intervene, r (45) = .29, p < .05. Preschool empathy responses were not associated with school-age emotion-regulation ability; however, school-age empathy was positively and robustly associated with later emotion regulation, r (45) = .30, p < .05. School-age emotion-regulation ability also was positively related to preschoolers readiness to intervene, r (45) = .47, p < .001, and negatively related to both internalizing, r (45) = .40, p < .01, and externalizing behavior, r (45) = .46, p < .01. Finally, rule-oriented prosocial motives were positively related to school-age internalizing behavior, r (45) = .54, p < .001. The nal set of regressions examined the role of the parental variables to the long-term prediction of childrens socioemotional competence. For these analyses, childrens scores on the schoolage measures were included as dependent variables in separate regressions. Only the model for school-age empathy was signicant, and only so for the maternal variables. For this model, preschool sympathy was included along with the maternal variables to control for childrens earlier competence in emotional responsiveness. Twenty-four percent of the variance was explained by this model,

In this article, we examined whether varying types of parental inductions are differentially related to varying dimensions of childrens sociomoral competence. Limited support emerged for the hypothesis that mothers and fathers parenting would predict aspects of sociomoral competence at both preschool and school-age children. Specically, maternal love withdrawal was a positive predictor of preschoolers empathy responses and motives of concern. This was surprising given that this parental strategy is typically regarded as negative. It is possible that love withdrawal may be harmful only when children are mature enough to consider it as part of a larger pattern of emotional unavailability (Mandara & Pikes, 2008). For young children, maternal love withdrawal may have operated as a short-term, albeit manipulative, strategy to elicit compliance in a specic disciplinary situation. Others also have found that the disapproving aspect of love withdrawal is positively correlated with child empathy (Krevans & Gibbs, 1996), lending to the idea that the optimal socialization of sociomoral competence requires a exible repertoire of parental strategies (Woolgar, Steele, Steele, Yabsley, & Fonagy, 2001). However, it is possible that the items on the SOMA may not capture the high levels of parental rejection that are characteristics of many love withdrawal scales, which could have impacted the results. For fathers, teaching reparations were positively associated with preschoolers sympathy responses. Fathers may be less reactive to childrens emotions than are mothers and therefore are better able to offer specic and helpful suggestions about how to help even when their children are highly distressed. Unlike fathers, mothers may focus on the victims emotions rather than offer an immediate remedial strategy, a hypothesis strengthened by the fact that the mothers in this study reported more victim-oriented inductions. In addition, maternal power assertion was negatively related to childrens sympathy at high levels of paternal power assertion, but not at low levels, suggesting that the use of problematic disciplinary strategies by both parents may place children at greater risk for poor developmental outcomes than exposure to the negative parenting of one or the other (Mezulis, Hyde, & Clark, 2004). Others also have found that coparenting that involves mothers and fathers use of positive disciplinary strategies is associated with the best outcomes for children (Volling et al., 2009). With regard to the follow-up ndings linking parenting to the school-age assessments, maternal power assertion at the preschool period was negatively associated with childrens long-term empathy. Because it elicits fearfulness, power assertive parenting may operate to focus childrens attention on what will happen to them if they do not comply with parental requests rather than directing their attention to the victim (e.g., Hoffman, 2000). Parents use more power assertion in disciplinary encounters than they do in

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other situations (Lindsey & Caldera, 2006), so it is important to consider it along with other disciplinary strategies in all types of parentchild interactions. Clearly, mothers and fathers parenting practices operate both similarly and differently, and they are interactively related to some aspects of childrens sociomoral development. A large literature has shown that positive maternal disciplinary strategies are negatively related to childrens empathetic and prosocial tendencies and that parental inductions predict sociomoral competence (e.g., deVeer & Janssens, 1994; Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967; Miller et al., 1989). However, most of these studies included only mothers, despite evidence that women and men have unique parenting roles and that their parenting styles are sometimes differentially related to child outcomes (Cassano, Adrian, Veits, & Zeman, 2006; Lindsey, Cremeens, & Caldera, 2010). The current ndings point to a need for more research that considers mothers and fathers as part of an interdependent family system. Hypotheses about how preschool sociomoral competence is linked to aspects of school-age childrens sociomoral, behavioral, and emotional competence also were evaluated. Preschool sympathy was negatively associated with later externalizing behavior. In addition, preschoolers readiness to intervene was positively related to school-age emotion-regulation ability and negatively associated with later internalizing and externalizing behavior. Few researchers have considered long-term associations between moral competence and socioemotional functioning, despite the fact that the early presence of moral competence may serve as a protective factor against later behavioral maladjustment (Hastings, Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, Usher, & Bridges, 2000; Ramos-Marcuse & Arsenio, 2001). Children with behavioral problems are less likely than are other children to recognize expressions of fear and sadness (i.e., distress cues; Blair & Coles, 2000), and those who do show the greatest increase in prosocial responsiveness over time (Marsh & Amabady, 2007). Difculty recognizing distress cues also may contribute to decreased awareness that a sociomoral response is required. Although preschool empathy responses were not associated with school-age emotion-regulation ability, school-age empathy and emotion regulation were positively associated. In some sense, emotion regulation is the ability to resist becoming overwhelmed by ones emotions, and those who achieve that may have the greatest opportunity for expressing sympathy or empathy because they may be especially competent at modulating the ow of emotion from self to other in ways that allow for an other- versus a self-oriented response (Koole, 2009). Finally, rule-oriented motives were positively related to school-age internalizing behavior. Rule-oriented motives reect an awareness of sociomoral rules, but may not require the insight that is required for the internalization of these same norms. Further, the rules that underlie sociomoral competence may be easily recognizable by most children and therefore may not always reect higher order understanding of the mental states of others. Over time, a pattern of rule-based responsiveness may contribute to feelings of anxiety because children are continuing to respond because of worry about punish-

ments or rewards that they might receive from parents or peers for noncompliance. That gender differences emerged also warrants attention. Girls reported more personal distress than did boys, a frequently reported nding (Eisenberg et al., 1988), and rule-orientation also was less of a motive for prosocial behavior for boys than it was for girls. Girls are more likely than are boys to appeal to rules of fairness and principles of benevolence (McGillicuddy-De Lisi, De Lisi, & Gulik, 2008) and demonstrate more knowledge of rules, more rule compliance, and more rule orientation with regard to safety than are boys (Grani e, 2007). Parents and teachers may expect girls to be more compliant, which may foster more explicit teaching of rules to girlsa hypothesis that should be investigated in future research. Limitations of this work include its correlational design, which does not allow for conclusions about direction of effects. In addition, the sample size did not permit the maternal and paternal variables being included in the same equations. Stronger effects also may have emerged if multiple data sources had been used. In addition, responses to power assertive and inductive items are inuenced by whether parents are in a good or a bad mood when completing the scales, and baseline assessments were not included (Critchley & Sanson, 2006). It also could be argued that the stories did not make high-enough demands on childrens arousal levels, reducing opportunities for appropriate or higher order responses; however, children are easily able to process and interpret the events from the perspective of children featured in hypothetical vignettes (Gernsbacher, Goldsmith, & Robertson, 1992). The participants were primarily White, well-educated, and middle-income. Only a few studies have addressed the socialization of moral development in minority and/or low-income children (e.g., Ramo-Marcuse & Arsenio, 2001; Weidman & Strayhorn, 1992). The lack of research on this topic for such a large segment of the population is unfortunate. Additional work also will be necessary if we are to determine the specic nature of the pathways that link parenting with early and later socioemotional competence.

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