Authoritarian parenting, religiosity, interpretive theory of mind, and shame in middle childhood
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Date
2018
Authors
Lall, Debra I. K.
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Abstract
How individual differences in shame are influenced by children’s developing social-cognitive skills is poorly understood in the psychological literature. Furthermore, developmental theories propose that social cognition and parental socialization jointly influence children’s emotional development. Despite the theoretical discussion about this developmental interplay, there is a paucity of empirical evidence about the relations between social cognition, socialization, and shame in childhood. The current study examined the relations among children’s interpretive theory of mind (IToM), authoritarian parenting style, parent religiosity, and children’s shame. Proneness to shame is problematic for some children, thus understanding why children vary in shame proneness could help us treat it. Method: Children completed tasks measuring IToM performance and self-reported shame. Mothers self-reported authoritarian parenting style, maternal religiosity, and reported on all relevant demographic variables. Analyses: Regression analyses tested the hypothesis that advanced IToM skills attenuate the positive association between authoritarian parenting and child shame. This study also predicted that maternal religiosity, child age, child gender, and social class, explain the variability in child shame. Discussion: Unexpectedly, the only significant outcome was a positive association between maternal religiosity and child shame. Results are discussed in the context of previous research on religiosity, socialization, social cognition, and child shame. In the literature, parental religiosity has been a largely overlooked influence on children’s self-conscious emotional development. Previous studies mostly examined religious affiliation, making this study’s finding an important contribution to the literature on children’s self-conscious emotional development.
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Keywords
Authoritarian parenting style, Interpretive theory of mind, Maternal religiosity, Middle childhood, Shame