The field of developmental psychopathology tends to focus on the negative aspects of functioning. However, prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding – positive aspects of functioning– might relate to some aspects of psychopathology in meaningful ways. In this article, we review research on the relations of three types of developmental psychopathology– externalizing problems (EPs), internalizing problems (IPs), and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) – to empathy-related responding (e.g., affective and cognitive empathy, sympathy, personal distress) and prosocial behavior. Empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior generally have been inversely related to EPs, although findings are sometimes reversed for young children and, for empathy, weak for reactive aggression. Some research indicates that children’s empathy (often measured as emotional contagion) and personal distress are positively related to IPs, suggesting that strong sensitivity to others’ emotions is harmful to some children. In contrast, prosocial behaviors are more consistently negatively related to IPs, although findings likely vary depending on the motivation for prosocial behavior and the recipient. Children with ASD are capable of prosocially and empathy-related responding, although parents report somewhat lower levels of these characteristics for ASD children compared to neurotypical peers. Issues in regard to measurement, motivation for prosociality, causal relations, and moderating and mediating factors are discussed.

Empathy plays a central role in prosocial behavior and human cooperation. Very few twin researchers have investigated innate and environmental effects in adult empathy, and twin research on gender differences in these effects is sparse. The goal of this study was to examine innate and environmental influences on three components of an empathy scale frequently used with adults — the expression of cognitive (CE), emotional (EE), and social skills (SS) empathy — and to explore gender differences in the influences. Study participants were ~1,700 twins (18–65 years) enrolled in the Italian Twin Registry. Empathy was assessed with the Italian version of the Empathy Quotient (EQ), for which the three-factor structure (i.e., CE, EE, and SS) was confirmed. Twin correlations in monozygotic and dizygotic pairs, and males and females were estimated for the total EQ and subscale scores, and univariate genetic model fitting was carried out. Women's empathy (i.e., total EQ as well as CE and EE subdimensions) was predominantly driven by genetic factors and individual experiences, whereas for males, no genetic contribution or important shared and individual environmental effects emerged. Although of large magnitude, the gender differences did not reach statistical significance. Age did not moderate empathy heritability in adulthood. Only for the SS subscale were genetic and environmental proportions of variance similar for men and women. This study suggests possible gender-specific innate and environmental influences on empathy and its cognitive and emotional components that need to be confirmed in future studies.

Previous research suggests that mothers’ and fathers’ parenting may be differentially influenced by marital and child factors within the family. Some research indicates that marital stress is more influential in fathers’ than mothers’ parenting, whereas other research shows that children's difficult behavior preferentially affects mothers’ parenting. The present study examined marital stress and children's externalizing behavior in middle childhood as predictors of mothers’ versus fathers’ consistency, monitoring, and support and care in early adolescence, and the subsequent associations of these parenting behaviors with externalizing behavior 1.5 years later. Pathways were examined within a longitudinal mediation model testing for moderation by parent gender (N = 276 mothers, N = 229 fathers). Children's externalizing behavior in middle childhood was found to more strongly inversely predict mothers’ versus fathers’ monitoring in early adolescence. In contrast, marital stress more strongly predicted low monitoring for fathers than for mothers. Regardless of parent gender, marital stress predicted lower levels of parental consistency, and children's externalizing behavior predicted lower levels of parental support. Mothers’ monitoring and fathers’ support in early adolescence predicted lower levels of externalizing behavior 1.5 years later. The results are discussed with respect to family transactions relative to parent gender and implications for intervention.

We contribute to the literature on the relations of temperament to externalizing and internalizing problems by considering parental emotional expressivity and child gender as moderators of such relations and examining prediction of pure and co-occurring problem behaviors during early to middle adolescence using bifactor models (which provide unique and continuous factors for pure and co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems). Parents and teachers reported on children's (4.5- to 8-year-olds; N = 214) and early adolescents’ (6 years later; N = 168) effortful control, impulsivity, anger, sadness, and problem behaviors. Parental emotional expressivity was measured observationally and with parents’ self-reports. Early-adolescents’ pure externalizing and co-occurring problems shared childhood and/or early-adolescent risk factors of low effortful control, high impulsivity, and high anger. Lower childhood and early-adolescent impulsivity and higher early-adolescent sadness predicted early-adolescents’ pure internalizing. Childhood positive parental emotional expressivity more consistently related to early-adolescents’ lower pure externalizing compared to co-occurring problems and pure internalizing. Lower effortful control predicted changes in externalizing (pure and co-occurring) over 6 years, but only when parental positive expressivity was low. Higher impulsivity predicted co-occurring problems only for boys. Findings highlight the probable complex developmental pathways to adolescent pure and co-occurring externalizing and internalizing problems.

At approximately 30, 42, and 54 months of age (N = 231), the relations among children's externalizing symptoms, intrusive maternal parenting, and children's effortful control (EC) were examined. Both intrusive parenting and low EC have been related to psychopathology, but children's externalizing problems and low EC might affect the quality of parenting and one another. Mothers’ intrusive behavior with their children was assessed with observations, children's EC was measured with mothers’ and caregivers’ reports, and children's externalizing symptoms were assessed with mothers’, fathers’, and caregivers’ reports. In a structural equation panel model, bidirectional relations between intrusive parenting and EC were found: EC at 30 and 42 months predicted low levels of intrusive parenting a year later, controlling for prior levels of parenting and vice versa. Moreover, high levels of children's externalizing problems at both 30 and 42 months negatively predicted EC a year later, controlling for prior levels of EC. Although externalizing problems positively predicted high EC over time, this appeared to be a suppression effect because these variables had a strong negative pattern in the zero-order correlations. Moreover, when controlling for the stability of intrusive parenting, EC, and externalizing (all exhibited significant stability across time) and the aforementioned cross-lagged predictive paths, EC and externalizing problems were still negatively related within the 54-month assessment. The findings are consistent with the view that children's externalizing behavior undermines their EC and contributes to intrusive mothering and that relations between intrusive parenting and EC are bidirectional across time. Thus, interventions that focus on modifying children's externalizing problems (as well as the quality of parenting) might affect the quality of parenting they receive and, hence, subsequent problems with adjustment.

Children's observed effortful control (EC) at 30, 42, and 54 months (n = 145) was predicted from the interaction between mothers' observed parenting with their 30-month-olds and three variants of the solute carrier family C6, member 3 (SLC6A3) dopamine transporter gene (single nucleotide polymorphisms in intron8 and intron13, and a 40 base pair variable number tandem repeat [VNTR] in the 3′-untranslated region [UTR]), as well as haplotypes of these variants. Significant moderating effects were found. Children without the intron8-A/intron13-G, intron8-A/3′-UTR VNTR-10, or intron13-G/3′-UTR VNTR-10 haplotypes (i.e., haplotypes associated with the reduced SLC6A3 gene expression and thus lower dopamine functioning) appeared to demonstrate altered levels of EC as a function of maternal parenting quality, whereas children with these haplotypes demonstrated a similar EC level regardless of the parenting quality. Children with these haplotypes demonstrated a trade-off, such that they showed higher EC, relative to their counterparts without these haplotypes, when exposed to less supportive maternal parenting. The findings revealed a diathesis–stress pattern and suggested that different SLC6A3 haplotypes, but not single variants, might represent different levels of young children's sensitivity/responsivity to early parenting.

We used sex, observed parenting quality at 18 months, and three variants of the catechol-O-methyltransferase gene (Val158Met [rs4680], intron1 [rs737865], and 3′-untranslated region [rs165599]) to predict mothers' reports of inhibitory and attentional control (assessed at 42, 54, 72, and 84 months) and internalizing symptoms (assessed at 24, 30, 42, 48, and 54 months) in a sample of 146 children (79 male). Although the pattern for all three variants was very similar, Val158Met explained more variance in both outcomes than did intron1, the 3′-untranslated region, or a haplotype that combined all three catechol-O-methyltransferase variants. In separate models, there were significant three-way interactions among each of the variants, parenting, and sex, predicting the intercepts of inhibitory control and internalizing symptoms. Results suggested that Val158Met indexes plasticity, although this effect was moderated by sex. Parenting was positively associated with inhibitory control for methionine–methionine boys and for valine–valine/valine–methionine girls, and was negatively associated with internalizing symptoms for methionine–methionine boys. Using the “regions of significance” technique, genetic differences in inhibitory control were found for children exposed to high-quality parenting, whereas genetic differences in internalizing were found for children exposed to low-quality parenting. These findings provide evidence in support of testing for differential susceptibility across multiple outcomes.

The additive and interactive relations of parenting styles (authoritative and authoritarian parenting) and child temperament (anger/frustration, sadness, and effortful control) to children's internalizing problems were examined in a 3.8-year longitudinal study of 425 Chinese children (aged 6–9 years) from Beijing. At Wave 1, parents self-reported on their parenting styles, and parents and teachers rated child temperament. At Wave 2, parents, teachers, and children rated children's internalizing problems. Structural equation modeling indicated that the main effect of authoritative parenting and the interactions of Authoritarian Parenting × Effortful Control and Authoritative Parenting × Anger/Frustration (parents' reports only) prospectively and uniquely predicted internalizing problems. The above results did not vary by child sex and remained significant after controlling for co-occurring externalizing problems. These findings suggest that (a) children with low effortful control may be particularly susceptible to the adverse effect of authoritarian parenting and (b) the benefit of authoritative parenting may be especially important for children with high anger/frustration.