How Parental Support Affects Latina Girls During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Empathic Accuracy and Posttraumatic Growth Effects on Empathy and Altruistic Sharing

Bibliographic Data

ID5338843
AuthorsJordan L Mullins (0000-0002-0104-1803, University of California, Riverside), E Zhou (0000-0001-9604-9404, University of California, Riverside), K J Michalska (0000-0002-4830-5036, University of California, Riverside)
Year2023
Volume54
Issue1-2
Pages95-109
Publication date2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1864-9335 • E-ISSN: 2151-2590
PublisherHogrefe Publishing Group (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1027/1864-9335/a000476
OpenAlexW4323058766
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited94

The current study focuses on a sample of low- to middle-income school-age Latina girls and their parents and examines how children's distress proneness interacts with parental empathic accuracy and posttraumatic growth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to predict children's empathy and prosocial behavior toward unknown others. Approximately 2-3 months into state-mandated stay-at-home orders, 55 parent-daughter dyads were recruited to participate in this four-session longitudinal study. To assess distress proneness, daughters (ages 8-13 years, 100% Latina) identified their degree of distress in response to pandemic-related stressors. Concurrently, their parents reported how they thought their children would respond to these same pandemic-related stressors, which assessed parental empathic accuracy. Parents also completed an adapted version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, which assessed perceived positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon study completion, a behavioral measure of children's empathic and prosocial behaviors was collected. Parental empathic accuracy interacted with children's distress proneness to positively predict children's affective empathy, such that children's distress proneness predicted affective empathy at high and mean, but not low, levels of parental empathic accuracy. In a separate analysis, parental posttraumatic growth interacted with children's distress proneness to positively predict children's altruistic sharing behavior, such that children's distress proneness predicted altruistic sharing behavior only at high, but not mean or low, levels of parental posttraumatic growth. The results of this study highlight how positive parental socialization and understanding of children's tendencies toward distress are associated with children's empathic and prosocial behaviors, particularly during major global crises

Developmental psychology · Distress · Empathic concern · Empathy · Latent growth modeling · Multilevel model · Personal distress · Perspective-taking · Prosocial behavior · Stressor · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics · Child Abuse and Trauma · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Clinical Psychology · Psychology · Social Psychology

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