The Relationship Between Reactive-Proactive Aggression in Adolescence With Empathy and Child-Rearing Styles

Objective:

The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent cognitive and affective empathy, harsh parenting, maternal acceptance/involvement, maternal strict supervision/control, paternalacceptance/involvement and paternal strict supervision/control variables predicted tendencies of adolescent reactive and proactive aggression.

Method:

Five hundred and forty-two students (271 females and 271 males) from two public schools participated in the study.Students were asked to complete a number of questionnaires including The Basic Empathy Scale, Reactive and Proactive Aggression Scale, Child Rearing Styles Scale and Harsh Parenting Scale. To examine whether cognitive and affective empathy, perceived child rearing styles and harsh parenting predicted reactive and proactive aggression in adolescent students, two different multiple regression analyses were performed on the data.

Results:

The results of the analyses indicated that adolescents that were exposed to harsh parenting scored higher in tendencies of both reactive and proactive aggression domains compared to their peers. Reactive aggression was predicted by perceived strict supervision and control of the mothers by the adolescents, indicating that mother’s strict control leads to a high level of reactive aggression. Mother’s acceptance/involvement signifi cantly and negatively predicted proactive aggression, meaning that the higher level of mother’s acceptance was related with lower levels of proactive aggression.

Discussion:

The results suggest that prevention and intervention programs designed to reduce reactive and proactive aggression in adolescents should involve parental education.