Between the Lines of Empathy and Parenting Styles: A Cultural Context Study of East Asian and North American SSES Data

• In Event: Education, Difference and Development (I)

Proposal

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

I. Title
Between the Lines of Empathy and Parenting Styles: A Cultural Context Study of East Asian and North American SSES Data

II. Abstract
Although both East-Asian and North American scholars have conducted adequate research on the relationship between adolescent empathy and parenting styles, this field is still dominated by single-country studies and lacks analysis from a cross-cultural perspective. In view of this, based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) leading survey of social and emotional skills (SSES) 2019 student questionnaire data from the United States, Canada, Korea, and China, this study uses descriptive statistics to provide an overview and comparative analysis of adolescents’ level of empathy in the above-mentioned North American and East-Asian cultural circles. Meanwhile, by means of linear regression, this study analyzes the cross-cultural differences in the relationship between different parenting styles and adolescents’ empathy. Based on the regional consistency and differences in the statistical significance of empathy and regression coefficients between North American and East-Asian adolescents, this study aims to provide insight into the country and cultural characteristics of the relationship between adolescents’ empathy and parenting styles.

III. Introduction
With the ever-changing and unpredictable global health, political and economic climate in the post pandemic era, we should deepen our research about adolescents’ non-cognitive skills, for example, the level of adolescents’ empathy as well as the mechanisms by which it can be enhanced to help adolescents achieve true happiness, success and self-worth in their personal lives and participate actively and fully in social life as citizens. In addition, while having this global understanding of the importance of empathy development, we should always be keenly aware that research about non-cognitive skills shouldn’t employ Anglo-Western or other monocultural analytical frameworks and evaluations as the only criteria, especially if it is initiated by an international organization. Behind the claims of an international assessment being neutral, rigorous, and scientific, it is always important to pose this question: Who get to design and analyze this survey? Whose values are presented behind its portrait of a “socially and emotionally well-off” person?
In order not to be driven away by any possible chances of cultural hegemony, we should discuss the findings of SSES from a contextual and multicultural perspective. Especially in the case of “empathy”, a core competency that is of major concern to the global education community, the studies of its influential mechanisms and formation methods should go beyond the paradigm of single-country confined research. Only by comparing the influential mechanisms and formation methods of “empathy” contextually can we deepen our understanding of how cultural heterogeneity may cast its influence on adolescent empathy while drawing conclusions about the appropriate empathy-developing approaches for a specific cultural circle or community based on its traditions.

I. Literature Review
In general, research about “empathy” in China mainly focuses on college students, while Western scholars tend to focus more on adolescents’ level of empathy. While different researchers may have different understandings of what “positive” or “negative” parenting styles may suggest based on their different research purposes and cultural backgrounds, they have all divided parenting styles into two categories: the one suggesting a positive parenting style, namely the “Understanding-Listening” parenting style that emphasizes warm emotional expression, communication and emotional support; the other, suggesting a negative parenting style, namely the parenting style that lacks warm emotional expression, communication and emotional support. In terms of the relationship between empathy and parenting styles, there is a consensus between East-Asian and Anglo-Western researchers in this field that the “Understanding-Listening” parenting styles have a significant positive impact on children's empathy and the “Strict-Punitive” parenting style may have a negative impact on children’s empathy and pro-social behavior development.

II. Theoretical framework
Up till now, research about the influences of parenting styles on adolescents’ empathy are mainly conducted within a single individual country. Although the research paradigm on parenting styles is relatively resourceful and its assessment tools are already mature, research on the relationship between empathy and parenting styles still lacks a multicultural perspective to explore and decipher each specific parenting style under a cultural and historical context. As we want to introduce “cultural context” to decipher the culturally specific effects of parenting styles on adolescents’ empathy, it is more accurate to introduce the concept of “cultural circles” as opposed to treating this comparative subject only as a geographical matter as in the terms of “country (nation/region)”. Here, in this research, we can analyze the data with a combined scope of both national and cultural circle differences. Based on this concept, our research is valuable in identifying the levels of cross-cultural consistency in the effects and relationships between different parenting styles on students’ empathy. Does the “Understanding-Listening” parenting style have a positive effect on the empathy of adolescents across different cultural circles? Do differences within or between cultural circles coexist?

III. Methodology
The dependent variable in our study is “empathy”, which the SSES assessment team designed its indicator based on a composite of six items. In this study, the independent variables were selected from the SSES survey that are related to parenting styles, and the items were combined by summing the means to form the following four synthetic variables: Understanding-Listening mother, Strict-Punitive mother, Understanding-Listening fathers, and Strict-Punitive fathers. This study uses the descriptive statistics function of the SPSS data processing software to gain a preliminary understanding of the gender and age differences in the level of empathy of adolescents in Canada, the United States, Korea, and China. Furthermore, this study uses the linear regression function of SPSS to analyze the characteristics of the relationship between adolescents’ level of empathy and parenting styles in the selected countries.

IV. Results
It was found that adolescents’ empathy is generally higher in East-Asian cultural circles than in North American cultural circles and East-Asian adolescent’s level of empathy was more strongly related to parenting styles. In China, even strict-punitive parenting could have positive effects on adolescents’ empathy, a finding that may be closely related to the traditional East-Asian culture of “filial piety (Xiao)”.

Author

• YiFan Li, Penn State University