Empathy as a Mediator Between Parental Attitudes and Adolescents’ Aggressive Behaviour

This study was designed to examine relationships between adolescents’empathy and aggression and parental attitudes. Two hundred and one high school students aged 16-18 completed the Polish Retrospective Parental Attitude Questionnaire, Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Results showed that paternal attitudes have a great influence on the level of aggression in children, either raising (inconsistency and excessive demands) or lowering it (acceptance and autonomy). In contrast, the role played by empathy is considerably lower and only supports the relationship between parental attitudes and level of aggression. It also turned out that empathy partly plays the role of a mediator between fathers‘parental attitudes and the level of aggression in adolescents.