10.

1177/0022022103257071
JOURNAL
Kim, RohnerOF
/ PARENTAL
CROSS-CULTURAL
ACCEPTANCE
PSYCHOLOGY
& EMPATHY ARTICLE

PERCEIVED PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE AND EMOTIONAL

EMPATHY AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN KOREA

SUNG-IL KIM
Kangnung National University, Korea
RONALD P. ROHNER
University of Connecticut

Drawing from a sample of 725 respondents, the hypothesis was tested that the level of emotional empathy
reported by university students in Korea is positively associated with the extent to which youths perceive
themselves to have been accepted by their parents in childhood. The question was also explored whether
variation in the level of boys’ versus girls’ emotional empathy was associated with differences in maternal
versus paternal acceptance. Results showed that the level of daughters’ (but not sons’) emotional empathy
varied directly with the level of perceived maternal acceptance, whereas the level of sons’ (but not daugh-
ters’) emotional empathy varied directly with the level of perceived paternal acceptance. Moreover, daugh-
ters (but not sons) who perceived themselves to have been rejected by their mothers (but not fathers) tended
to be significantly less emotionally empathic than did daughters who perceived themselves to have been
accepted by their mothers.

Keywords: parental acceptance; parental warmth; empathy; adolescents; Korean students

According to Hoffman (1982, 2001) and others (Barnett, 1987; Eisenberg, 2000; Eisenberg
& McNally, 1993; Zhou et al., 2002), empathy is essential for making social life possible in
that it provides the motivational base for specific prosocial acts such as helping and comfort-
ing others, sharing, turn taking, and cooperating. Empathy has also been highlighted as
being significantly associated with altruism. Batson (1987), Eisenberg and Fabes (1998),
Roberts and Strayer (1996), in particular, regard empathy as the critical component for pro-
moting altruistic behavior. In addition, empathy is said to be a major component of emo-
tional intelligence, described as the ability to perceive, express, and manage emotions in
oneself and others so as to foster personal growth (Salovey, Bedell, Detweiler, & Mayer,
2000). Moreover, empathy is said to be a key element in moral conduct (Chlopan, McCain,
Carbonell, & Hagen, 1985; Hoffman, 2000), and it is said to be a necessary and sufficient
condition for giving psychotherapy (Rogers, 1975).
Despite evidence and claims such as this, we must also note that scholars do not always
agree about the conceptual definition of empathy or about the proper way to operationalize
it. Gladstein (1977), for example, placed different views of empathy on a cognitive-affective
continuum. For him, cognitive empathy involves the ability to think as others do and to con-
sciously take the role of others. Affective empathy, on the other hand, refers to taking the
feelings, attitudes, or emotions of another person. Finally, cognitive-affective empathy

AUTHORS’NOTE: Support for this study was provided to the first author by the Korea Research Foundation, Grant No. KRF-2001-
013-C00164. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ronald P. Rohner, Ronald and Nancy Rohner Center for
the Study of Parental Acceptance and Rejection, School of Family Studies, U-2058, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-
2058; e-mail: rohner@uconn.edu.

JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 34 No. 6, November 2003 723-735

DOI: 10.1177/0022022103257071
© 2003 Western Washington University

723

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724 JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

refers to experiencing the feelings of others affectively, cognitively decoding with accuracy
the information from others, and then encoding it back again.
Most scholars, however, tend to place empathy into one of two complementary categories
(Hoffman, 1982, 2000). In one, empathy is defined as the cognitive awareness of other peo-
ple’s internal psychological states such as their thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and inten-
tions. In the other, empathy is defined as a vicarious affective response to another person.
According to Hoffman (2000), the key ingredient of the affective conception is the involve-
ment of psychological processes that make people have feelings that are more congruent
with another person’s situation than with their own. Or as stated by Mussen and Eisenberg
(2001), empathy refers to an emotional reaction based on the comprehension of another per-
son’s emotional state or condition that is similar to or identical with that state. Mussen and
Eisenberg continued their discussion of empathy by distinguishing empathy from sympathy,
which they defined as an emotional response to another person’s emotional state in which
individuals do not feel the same emotion as the distressed individual. Nonetheless, sympa-
thetic individuals do feel concern or sorrow for the other person. In this article, we focus on
emotional empathy versus sympathy or other forms of empathy.
A number of researchers in the United States have studied familial antecedents to the
development of emotional empathy. Most of these researchers appear to agree that the devel-
opment of emotional empathy is facilitated in families where children experience substantial
warmth, nurturance, affection, and overall parental support and acceptance (Barnett, King,
Howard, & Dino, 1980; Bryant, 1987; Eisenberg, 1992; Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989; Grusec,
1981; Trommsdorff, 1991; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & King, 1979). Studying a sample
of 149 university students, for example, Henry, Sager, and Plunkett (1996) found that adoles-
cents who perceived their parents to be supportive reported themselves to be higher in
empathic concern than did youths whose parents were less supportive. On the other hand,
Straker and Jacobson (1981) found abused children to be lower in empathy than a matched
sample of children growing up in loving families. Similarly, Miller and Eisenberg (1988)
also found abusive behaviors by parents to be negatively associated with children’s empathy.
As useful as cross-sectional studies such as these are, they do not allow researchers to dis-
entangle cause from effect. Longitudinal research such as that conducted by Koestner,
Franz, and Weinberger (1990), however, helps identify the causal chain. These authors
showed that paternal involvement in child care and maternal satisfaction with the role of
mother when the children were 5 years old predicted offspring’s empathic concern at age 31.
Thus, it seems clear, at least for Americans, that parental warmth, support, or overall accep-
tance tend to precede the development of emotional empathy.
Although the connection between parental acceptance and emotional empathy often
appears fairly apparent—at least in the United States—the mechanisms that produce this
connection have not been clearly identified. Here, parental acceptance-rejection theory
(PARTheory) might help explain the connection. PARTheory is a theory of socialization that
attempts to predict and explain major antecedents, consequences, and other correlates of
parental acceptance and rejection within the United States and worldwide (R. P. Rohner,
1975, 1986, 1994, 1999). PARTheory’s personality subtheory postulates that children and
adults everywhere—regardless of differences in culture, race, gender, socioeconomic status,
and other such defining conditions—are predisposed to develop a specific constellation of
personality dispositions as a result of experiencing varying degrees of parental acceptance or
rejection. More specifically, PARTheory postulates that humans everywhere have a funda-
mental, phylogenetically acquired need for positive response from people most important to
them. This positive response includes the need for warmth, affection, care, nurturance,

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 Kim, Rohner / PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE & EMPATHY 725

support—that is, for love—from parents and other attachment figures. Depending on the
extent to which the need is satisfied, that is the extent to which individuals perceive them-
selves to be accepted or rejected by parents and other attachment figures, humans are
expected in the theory to develop a specific cluster of dispositions, including hostility,
aggression, passive aggression, or problems with the management of hostility and aggres-
sion; dependence, healthy independence, or defensive independence; positive or negative
self-esteem; positive or negative self-adequacy; emotional (un)responsiveness; emotional
(in)stability; and positive or negative worldviews. In addition, rejected children are expected
to feel anxious and insecure in their relationship with their major caregivers.
Overall, in PARTheory, this form of psychological adjustment of children and adults is
expected to vary directly with the extent to which the need for positive response is satisfied.
As noted later, this level of adjustment is argued to be one of the significant classes of factors
associated with different levels of empathic development. A meta-analysis of 43 studies
drawing from 7,563 respondents in 15 countries and ethnic groups worldwide (Khaleque &
Rohner, 2002a) confirmed the expectation that perceived parental acceptance-rejection is
universally associated with the form of psychological adjustment previously described. In
that meta-analysis, the predicted link between perceived acceptance and psychological
adjustment appeared without exception in all studies worldwide. The mean weighted effect
sizes (Rosenthal, 1994) across the full range of sociocultural and ethnic groups in the study
were r = .51 for children and r = .46 for adults. Analysis of fail-safe N showed that 3,433
additional studies, all with nonsignificant results, would be required to disconfirm the pan-
cultural association between perceived acceptance or rejection and children’s psychological
adjustment; 941 such studies would be required to disconfirm this relation among adults.
Thus, strong evidence supports PARTheory’s expectations that children everywhere who
come from loving (accepting) families are more likely than children who come from unlov-
ing (rejecting) families to feel good about themselves (positive self-esteem); feel competent
(positive self-adequacy); have the capacity to freely and nondefensively develop intimate,
trusting relationships (emotional responsiveness); view the world and most humans as being
benevolent or positive in other ways (positive worldview); and have the other positive dispo-
sitions cited in PARTheory’s personality subtheory. Personal dispositions such as these
along with the presence of nurturing parents with whom children may identify and on whom
children may model their own behavior provide affective, cognitive, and motivational con-
texts for children’s development of a range of prosocial behaviors including empathy, gener-
osity, compassion, and altruism, among others.
This line of reasoning is echoed by Mussen and Eisenberg (2001), who wrote that com-
pelling evidence from both experimental and clinical studies show that modeling and identi-
fication with nurturing caregivers fosters the development of prosocial behavior. Similarly,
Hoffman (1981b, 1982, 2000) argued that exposing children to models who act altruistically
and who express their sympathetic feelings contributes to children’s acting empathetically
rather than making counterempathetic attributions about the cause of people’s distress.
Paying attention to children’s internal psychological states rather than to modeling per se,
Staub (1992) added the additional insight that empathy tends to arise from children’s con-
nection with other people and from their capacity to understand the internal states of others.
A number of studies in Korea have dealt with issues of perceived parental acceptance or
rejection and with the developmental correlates of perceived acceptance or rejection
(Hwang, 1997; S. Kim, 1996; Lee, 1998; R. P. Rohner & Pettengill, 1985; Yeon, 1998). Sev-
eral have also dealt with similar issues among Korean American immigrants (K. Kim &
Rohner, 2002; Pettengill & Rohner, 1985; E. C. Rohner & Rohner, 1983; R. P. Rohner, Hahn,

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726 JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

& Koehn, 1992; R. P. Rohner, Hahn, & Rohner, 1980). None of these studies, however,
explored the relation between perceived parental acceptance and emotional empathy. In fact,
despite promising beginnings on this topic in the United States, apparently no study has yet
been published outside North America on the familial antecedents of emotional empathy.
Consequently, this study attempts to redress this shortcoming by testing the hypothesis that
the level of emotional empathy reported by university students in Korea is positively associ-
ated with the extent to which youths perceive themselves to have been accepted by their par-
ents in childhood. Korea is an especially salient location for testing this hypothesis because
of the overarching cultural importance of the family there (Crane, 1974). Korea is also an
appropriate location for exploring the question of whether variation in youths’ (boys’ versus
girls’) emotional empathy is associated with differences in maternal versus paternal accep-
tance. This question is relevant in Korea because of the widely shared cultural ideology—
especially among parents of college-age students or older—affirming the value of om bu ja
mo (“strict father, benevolent mother”) (K. Kim & Rohner, 2002; R. P. Rohner & Pettengill,
1985). Moreover, traditional Korean values tend to support gender role differentiation in the
socialization process (Yang, 2000). In this process, parents place somewhat different devel-
opmental pressures on sons versus daughters.

METHOD

SAMPLE

A total of 725 Korean adolescents attending a university in Kangnung, Korea, partici-

pated in the study. Most of the students were from intact two-parent families. Students
ranged in age from 19 to 21, with a mean age of 19.52 years (SD = 1.02 years). In all, 317
(44%) were male and 408 (56%) were female. Of these students’fathers, 20% had graduated
from college, 63% had only gone as far as high school, and 17% had gone through elemen-
tary school only. Of the students’ mothers, 9% had graduated from college, 60% had gone
only as far as high school, and 32% had gone through elementary school only. These figures
show that by Korean standards, the great majority of students in the sample came from work-
ing-class families.

INSTRUMENTS

Two self-report questionnaires were used in this study. Parental acceptance was measured
by the adult version of Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) (R. P. Rohner,
1990). The PARQ has been used in approximately 300 studies within the United States and
internationally in the past two decades (K. Kim & Rohner, 2002; R. P. Rohner, 1999, 2003).
Empathy was measured by the Emotional Empathy Test (EET) (Mehrabian & Epstein,
1972). This questionnaire is among the most frequently used measures of emotional empa-
thy. Both tests were originally developed in English, but to be used with Korean students,
they were translated into Korean and back translated into English following recommenda-
tions suggested by Brislin (1980). The original English version and the back-translated ver-
sion were then compared by Korean psychologists and discrepancies were corrected. This
process was repeated until the back-translated version matched the original English version.
In addition, changes noted as follows were also made to the tests in the validation process.

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 Kim, Rohner / PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE & EMPATHY 727

PARQ. The adult PARQ is a 60-item self-report questionnaire asking adults to reflect on
the level of acceptance or rejection they experienced when they were about 7 through 11
years of age. The questionnaire contains the following four scales: Warmth-Affection, Hos-
tility-Aggression, Indifference-Neglect, and Undifferentiated Rejection. Undifferentiated
rejection refers to individuals’ feelings that their parents did not really love or care about
them without necessarily experiencing other behavioral indicators that the parents were
neglecting, unaffectionate, or aggressive toward them. Examples of scale items include “My
mother made me feel wanted and needed” (perceived warmth and affection), “My mother
went out of her way to hurt my feelings” (perceived hostility and aggression), “My mother
ignored me as long as I did nothing to bother her” (perceived indifference and neglect), and
“My mother did not really love me” (perceived undifferentiated rejection). The mother and
father versions of the PARQ are identical except for reference to mother’s behavior versus
father’s behavior in each version.
Individuals respond to statements such as these on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging
from 4 (almost always true) to 1 (almost never true). The total PARQ score is a summary
measure of the overall parental acceptance or rejection that individuals perceived they expe-
rienced in childhood. The total score is achieved by summing the four individual scales (after
reverse scoring the Warmth-Affection scale to create a measure of perceived coldness and
lack of affection). Scores on the standard version of the PARQ range from a low of 60 (indi-
cating maximum perceived acceptance) to a high of 240 (indicating maximum perceived
rejection).
Extensive validation studies summarized in Cournoyer and Rohner (1996), Khaleque and
Rohner (2002b), R. P. Rohner (1986, 1990), R. P. Rohner and Britner (2002), R. P. Rohner
and Cournoyer (1994) show the instrument to be unusually robust in cross-cultural research.
For example, internal reliabilities of the scales typically range from .86 to .95 (R. P. Rohner,
1990). Moreover, results of meta-analyses of 51 studies worldwide conducted from 1976
through 2000 (Khaleque & Rohner, 2002b) showed the mean weighted alpha coefficients
(.95) for the adult PARQ are strong enough to reassure researchers about the reliability of the
questionnaire for use in multi-ethnic and cross-cultural comparative research. Indeed, all
alpha coefficients exceeded the .80 criterion recommended for measures to be used in clini-
cal or applied practice as well as in basic research (Cournoyer & Klein, 2000). Additional
details about the scales, scoring procedures, and reports of validity and reliability of the
PARQ are provided in R. P. Rohner (1990).
For the purposes of this study, the PARQ was shortened by half in the validation process
with the Korean sample. This was done because a principal component factor analysis of the
Korean-language version of the PARQ showed that 30 items loaded at .40 or greater on the
acceptance and rejection factors and accounted for more than 50% of the variance. In addi-
tion, the response format was changed from a 4-point type to a 5-point type, inserting an
undecided category as a neutral or midpoint of an item. This modification was made because
5-point scales are customary in school settings with which many Korean students are famil-
iar. Finally, whereas the standard version of the PARQ is keyed in the direction of perceived
rejection, this short version was keyed in the direction of acceptance. Thus, possible scores
on the short version ranged from 30 to 150. The measure was conceptually designed in such a
way that scores at or above the test midpoint of 90 revealed the experience of more accep-
tance than rejection, whereas scores at or below 89 reflected the experience of qualitatively
more rejection than acceptance. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of this modified test were .97
for the father form and .95 for the mother form. More detailed descriptions of the validation
process for the test are reported in S. Kim (1996).

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728 JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

EET. The EET is a 33-item self-report questionnaire assessing individuals’ levels of emo-
tional empathy. Individuals respond to subscale items on a scale from 4 (very strong agree-
ment) to –4 (very strong disagreement). The questionnaire consists of seven interconnected
subscales. These subscales with sample items include (a) Susceptibility to Emotional Conta-
gion (“The people around me have a great influence on my mood”), (b) Appreciation of the
Feelings of Unfamiliar and Distant Others (“Lonely people are probably unfriendly,” reverse
scored), (c) Extreme Emotional Responsiveness (“Sometimes, the words of a love song can
move me deeply”), (d) Tendency to Be Moved by Others’ Positive Emotional Experiences
(“Another’s laughter is not catching for me,” reverse scored), (e) Tendency to Be Moved by
Other’s Negative Emotional Experiences (“Seeing people cry upsets me”), (f) Sympathetic
Tendency (“It is hard for me to see how some things upset people so much”), (g) Willingness
to Be in Contact With Others Who Have Problems (“When a friend starts to talk about his
problems, I try to steer the conversation to something else,” reverse scored).
To compute a total empathy score, the signs on negative items are changed and then an
algebraic sum of all 33 responses is obtained. Thus, responses are scored so that higher
scores reflect greater empathy. As reported by Mehrabian and Epstein (1972), the split-half
reliability for the questionnaire on a sample of 202 college students was .84. Significant cor-
relations between empathic tendency and helping behavior of university students (r = .31,
p < .05), on one hand, or between empathic tendency and aggression (r = –.21, p < .05), on
the other, help demonstrate the construct validity for the scale (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972).
To make the scoring of the EET parallel with the scoring of the PARQ, the response format of
the EET was reduced in this study to the same 5-point scale used on the PARQ. Thus, possi-
ble scores on the EET spread from 33 to 165, with higher scores revealing greater emotional
empathy. Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .68, but in a related study using the same mea-
sure among Korean and Canadian university students (S. Kim, 1993), the alpha was accept-
ably high at .72.

PROCEDURES

The two questionnaires and an information sheet asking about family demographics were
distributed to students during regular class periods. Classroom instructors were briefed on
the nature and significance of the study and were told how to administer the questionnaires.

RESULTS

As shown in Table 1, adolescents tended to perceive both their mothers and fathers to be
warm and loving, although the youths did perceive their mothers to be slightly but signifi-
cantly more accepting than their fathers, t(723) = 9.30, p < .001. This fact reflects the Korean
cultural expectation of “strict father and benevolent mother.” Also consistent with this cul-
tural ideology is the fact that only 3% of the students reported their mothers to be qualita-
tively more rejecting than accepting, whereas 8% of the students reported their fathers to be
more rejecting. The figure for mothers is slightly lower than is typically true for either
Korean American adolescents or for European American youths, where 7% to 10% of the
youths generally report more parental (paternal as well as maternal) rejection than accep-
tance (K. Kim & Rohner, 2002; R. P. Rohner, 1986, 1999).
To determine whether perceived acceptance varied as a function of either students’ sex or
parents’ education, we computed a series of 2 × 3 (Students’ Sex × Parents’ Education)

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 Kim, Rohner / PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE & EMPATHY 729

TABLE 1
Means and Standard Deviations for Parental Acceptance and Empathy by Sex

Sex Paternal Acceptance Maternal Acceptance Empathy

Male (n = 317)
M 119.68 126.71 110.35
SD 19.01 15.55 7.98
Female (n = 408)
M 119.99 125.07 114.27
SD 21.12 16.51 8.68
Total (n = 725)
M 119.86 125.79 112.56
SD 20.42 16.11 8.59

ANOVAs. Regarding paternal acceptance, results of tests showed no significant main effects
for either students’ sex, F(1, 719) = 1.02, not significant, or for fathers’ education, F(2, 719)
= 2.26, not significant. In addition, there was no significant interaction between youths’ sex
and fathers’ education, F(2, 719) = 2.28, not significant. Similarly, results of tests for mater-
nal acceptance showed no significant main effect for either youths’sex, F(1, 719) = 0.82, not
significant, or mother’s education, F(2, 719) = 1.41, not significant. In addition, there was no
significant interaction between youths’ sex and mothers’ education, F(2, 719) = 1.96, not
significant. Thus, it appeared that youths’ perceptions of parental acceptance did not vary by
either students’sex or student’s social class background using parents’level of education as a
proxy measure of socioeconomic status (Harris & Morgan, 1991).
Table 1 also shows that both male and female students were fairly empathic, but results of
ANOVA revealed that female students reported themselves to be slightly but significantly
more empathic than did male students, F(1, 719) = 25.53, p = .0001. Moreover, results of
ANOVA showed that neither fathers’ education, F(2, 719) = .46, not significant, nor moth-
ers’ education, F(2, 719) = 1.19, not significant, had a significant main effect on youths’
empathy. Further analyses showed no significant interaction between youths’ sex and
fathers’ education, F(2, 719) = 2.19, not significant, or mothers’ education, F(2, 719) = 1.87,
not significant. Accordingly, no further exploration was made of the possible influence of
parents’ education, that is, of socioeconomic status.
To investigate the relation between parental acceptance and youths’ emotional empathy,
an intercorrelation matrix was created (see Table 2) showing two sets of correlations
between parental (paternal and maternal) acceptance and youths’(boys’and girls’) empathy.
One set of coefficients shows the simple correlation between variables. But because mater-
nal and paternal acceptance correlate strongly, r(725) = .58, p < .001, more revealing results
are provided by the partial correlations displayed within parenthesis. In these partials, the
contribution of maternal acceptance was removed from the correlation between paternal
acceptance and youths’ empathy. Similarly, the contribution of paternal acceptance was
removed from the correlation between maternal acceptance and youths’empathy. Inspection
of the partials in Table 2 shows that maternal acceptance by itself (but not paternal accep-
tance) made a significant contribution to variations in daughters’but not sons’empathy. Con-
versely, paternal acceptance by itself (but not maternal acceptance) made a significant con-
tribution to variations in sons’ but not daughters’ empathy.
In addition to knowing that increments in perceived maternal and paternal acceptance are
linearly associated with increments in daughters’and sons’emotional empathy, respectively,

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730 JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

TABLE 2
Simple and Partial Correlations Between
Parental Acceptance and Students’ Empathy by Sex

Students’ Empathy
Parental Acceptance Male Female Total

Maternal .16** .25*** .20***

(.04) (.24***) (.15***)
Paternal .21*** .10 .14**
(.14*) (–.05) (.03)
NOTE: Numbers in parentheses are partial correlations, controlling for the effect of the opposite gender of parent.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

it is also important to know whether the level of offspring empathy is associated categori-
cally with the experience of overall parental acceptance versus rejection. To determine this,
we divided the youths into two groups. One group reported categorically more rejection than
acceptance. The high acceptance group scored at or above the test midpoint of 90 on the
revised PARQ, revealing the experience of substantial parental love; the low acceptance
group scored at or below 89, revealing the experience of more rejection than acceptance.
Results of analyses using t tests are reported in Table 3. There, one can see that only mothers’
overall acceptance versus rejection of their daughters (but not their sons) significantly
shaped differences in offspring empathy. That is, daughters (but not sons) who perceived
themselves to have been rejected in childhood by their mothers tended to be significantly less
emotionally empathic than did those who perceived themselves to have been accepted by
their mothers. Perceived paternal rejection was not associated with any such difference for
either sons or daughters.

DISCUSSION

In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the level of emotional empathy reported by uni-
versity students in Korea is positively associated with the extent to which the youths perceive
themselves to have been accepted by their parents in childhood. We also explored possible
gender-of-parent by gender-of-child associations in the relation between emotional empathy
and perceived parental acceptance. Analyses partially support the major hypothesis but also
reveal gender of parent by gender of offspring associations. Specifically, the more accepting
mothers (but not fathers) are perceived to have been in childhood, the more emotionally
empathic college-age daughters but not sons report themselves to be. Similarly, the more
accepting fathers (but not mothers) are perceived to have been in childhood, the more emo-
tionally empathic college-age sons but not daughters report themselves to be. Thus, appar-
ently only mothers’ acceptance in Korea is linearly associated with variations in daughters’
emotional empathy, whereas only fathers’ acceptance is linearly associated with variations
in sons’ emotional empathy. However these results become more complex for those youths
who report experiencing qualitatively more rejection than acceptance in childhood. Spe-
cifically, daughters but not sons who perceive themselves to have been rejected by their
mothers in childhood report being significantly less emotionally empathic than do daughters
who feel they had been accepted by their mothers. Perceived paternal rejection, however, is
not associated with any such differences for either sons or daughters.

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 Kim, Rohner / PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE & EMPATHY 731

TABLE 3
Means, Standard Deviations, and Significance Tests for
Empathy by Sex Across Levels of Parental Acceptance

Parental Acceptance
Paternal Maternal
a
Youths’ Sex High Low t High Low t

Male
M 110.44 108.70 .84 110.36 109.00 .48
SD 7.91 8.56 8.01 6.23
n 297 20 311 6
Female
M 114.37 113.27 .61 114.53 106.31 3.83***
SD 8.47 10.70 8.49 10.97
n 371 37 395 13
Total
M 112.62 111.67 .68 112.69 107.16 2.41*
SD 8.46 10.25 8.52 9.63
n 668 57 706 19
a. Because the sample sizes were different, t values and approximations to the correct degrees of freedom were
adjusted using the formula suggested by Blalock (1979).
*p < .05. ***p < .001.

Although the mechanisms explaining gender of parent by gender of offspring differences

are not clearly understood in the development of emotional empathy, research reported in the
United States also sometimes reports such differences. Feshbach (1982) and Goldstein and
Michaels (1985), for example, found that empathy among girls was positively associated
with maternal permissiveness, whereas no significant relationship was found between
fathers’ parenting practice and their daughters’ empathic responsiveness. In addition, no sig-
nificant relationship was found between mothers’ parenting practices and sons’ empathy.
Similarly, Barnett et al. (1980) reported that daughters’ empathy was associated with moth-
ers’ empathy only. Sons’ empathy was unrelated to either parents’ behavior.
In the Korean context, it is perhaps not altogether surprising that the level of mothers’
acceptance appears to have greater impact on the development of empathic feelings than
does that of fathers. This is because Korean cultural ideology—which draws from Confu-
cianism—tends to support role differentiation in parenting in which mothers are expected to
be nurturing and somewhat lenient, whereas fathers are expected to be somewhat stricter and
more emotionally distant (Crane, 1974; Hewes & Kim, 1952; Koh, 1981; Min, 1988;
Osgood, 1951). Insofar as mothers fail to live up to the cultural expectation of maternal love,
youths may experience greater psychological distress than when fathers fail to be loving
(R. P. Rohner & Pettengill, 1985). This may be especially true for daughters because of the
emphasis on gender role differentiation in Korean socialization processes in which daugh-
ters probably come to identify with and model themselves after their mothers more than with
their fathers and sons tend to identify with and model themselves after their fathers more than
their mothers (B.C. Hahn, personal communication, May 1998). Thus, maternal rejection
might reasonably be expected to have a greater impact on Korean daughters than on sons and
thus affect daughters’ level of emotional empathy more than that of sons.
However, this does not explain why those sons who feel rejected by either their mothers or
their fathers do not report a lower level of emotional empathy than do sons who feel loved by

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732 JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

their parents. Indeed, from PARTheory, one would expect sons to be affected—at least by
maternal rejection—to about the same extent as are daughters despite cultural expectations
about allowable differences in maternal versus paternal warmth and despite gender role dif-
ferences in the enculturation process. Of course, part of the explanation for the unpredicted
results in this study no doubt has to do with the fact that parental warmth or acceptance per se
is probably not the central factor accounting for differences in children’s development of
emotional empathy. In fact, as noted earlier, there is a strong likelihood that parental warmth
may serve primarily as a salient context facilitating the operation of other factors such as
modeling and identification with nurturing caregivers. Compelling evidence suggests that
factors such as these are among the key processes in the development of prosocial behaviors,
including empathy (Rutherford & Mussen, 1968). Eisenberg and Fabes (1998), for example,
found that children are most likely to imitate prosocial actions modeled by adults when the
adults themselves are nurturing. Many others too have noted that imitation, modeling, and
identification are most likely to occur in contexts of parental nurturance or acceptance
(Bandura, 1969; Mischel, 1976). In addition to factors such as these, evidence is mounting
that empathy may have a hereditary component (Hoffman, 1981a, 2000). According to
Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, and Emde (1992), for example, the correlation between scores on
empathic concern for others was greater among identical twins than among fraternal twins.
Finally, parenting practices other than parental acceptance have also been implicated in
the development of emotional empathy, although some of these practices themselves tend to
be strongly correlated with parental acceptance. Such forms of parenting include the ten-
dency to reason with children, to explain why parents approve or disapprove of specific
behaviors, and especially to use induction—where parents highlight the others’ perspective,
point out the others’ distress, and make it clear that the child’s behavior caused the distress
(Eisenberg, 1983; Fabes et al., 1994; Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Hoffman, 1970; Mussen &
Eisenberg, 2001; Staub, 1992).
Although the pattern of findings in this study as well as in studies conducted within the
United States generally support the research hypothesis, one cannot assume that variations
in reported childhood experiences of parental acceptance or rejection necessarily cause
associated differences in levels of empathy. Indeed, it is possible that individuals at different
levels of empathic development might differentially recall their childhood parenting experi-
ences. Longitudinal research is required to fully assess this possibility. Longitudinal evi-
dence from Cournoyer and Rohner (1996) provides some reassurance, however, that youths’
retrospective reporting of parental acceptance-rejection tends to be reliable—and not biased
by systematic distortion—and that the experience of parental acceptance or rejection there-
fore probably does precede the development of emotional empathy and other such personal-
ity dispositions. More specifically, a sample of 543 7- to 11-year-old American children
responded to the standard version of the child PARQ, which asks children about their current
experiences of parental acceptance or rejection. After 7 years, a subsample of these youths—
now adolescents—were asked on the adult version of the PARQ to reflect back to the accep-
tance they had experienced when they were between 7 and 11 years of age. The test-retest
correlation was r = .62, p < .0001 (Cournoyer & Rohner, 1996), revealing robust agreement
between adolescents’ retrospective remembrances of parental acceptance or rejection in
childhood and the youths’ reporting of their then-current parenting experiences 7 years ear-
lier. From this evidence, one may reasonably speculate that in all likelihood, maternal accep-
tance provided a salient context for the subsequent development of emotional empathy
among Korean daughters and that paternal acceptance provided such a context for the

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 Kim, Rohner / PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE & EMPATHY 733

development of emotional empathy among Korean sons. The specific mechanisms produc-
ing these associations are yet to be determined.

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Sung-Il Kim is a professor of educational psychology at Kangnung National University in Kangnung,

Republic of Korea. His research interests focus on adolescent development and psychological adjustment.

Ronald P. Rohner, Ph.D., is the director of the Ronald and Nancy Rohner Center for the Study of Parental
Acceptance and Rejection in the School of Family Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is also
a professor emeritus of family studies and anthropology at the university. His research interests focus on
major styles of parenting, especially the warmth dimension of parenting, and on their worldwide conse-
quences for children and adults.

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