This study investigated the influence of parental empathy on adolescents'' cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Also, it was examined whether the self-esteem would mediate the relationship between the parental empathy and adolescents'' cognitive emotion regulation strategies.
This study surveyed 502 male and female students at middle school lived in Seoul, Daegu, and Jinju city, Korea. The data were analyzed by SPSS statistics 23.0 program. The relationship among parental empathy, adolescents'' cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and self-esteem was identified through the correlation analysis and regression analysis. Also in order to find out mediating effects of self-esteem, the hierarchical regression analysis of Baron and Kenny(1986) was used.
The major findings of this study were as follows; First, the self-esteem(general self, social self-peers, home and parents, school-academic) mediated the relationship between parental cognitive empathy and adolescents'' adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Second, the self-esteem(general self, social self-peers, home and parents) mediated the relationship between parental emotional empathy and adolescents'' adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. But the mediating effect of school-academic self-esteem was proved only between father''s emotional empathy and adolescents'' adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Third, parental cognitive empathy did not affect adolescents'' maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. But parental emotional empathy affected adolescents'' maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and only the mediating effect of school-academic self-esteem was significant.
The findings of this study suggest that parents are required to show balanced cognitive and emotional empathy for adolescents to improve adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and self-esteem. Also it was proposed that parental emotional empathy is more important than cognitive empathy for adolescents‘ to reduce maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and to improve self-esteem. Thus, it has been confirmed that the parental empathy(cognitive, emotional) has positive effects on adolescents'' self-esteem and cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and there is a need for parental empathy education program.