Kornienko, D.S.

Background. Modern psychology of parenting offers various phenomena for study, including parental relations, parental attitudes, and parenting practices. The study of parental attitudes enables us to describe the cognitive aspect of the family environment in which the child develops. Previous studies have found a significant association between parental attitudes and the cognitive and socio-emotional development of children. However, their results are ambiguous and require further clarification.

Objectives. The aim of this study is to analyze the connection between parental attitudes regarding the necessity of structuring the environment or supporting the child’s spontaneous activity, and the indicators of the child’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. In addition, the study examines the presence of confrontation between parents regarding the characteristics of upbringing and fostering.

Methods. We developed three groups of statements to identify parental attitudes: 1) statements about the organization of the child’s life; 2) statements about the role of play activities; 3) statements about confrontational attitudes within the family. Indicators of children’s cognitive development were identified using J. Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices and subtests of the NEPSY-II method. Social-emotional features were identified with the “Test for Understanding Emotions”.

Results. Most parents consider a structured environment to be more important for the well-being of their child. In addition, research has shown that attitudes towards the positive impact of a structured environment are a strong predictor of a child’s nonverbal intelligence. Similarly, attitudes towards the importance of spontaneous activity are predictors of auditory-verbal memory and the ability to switch tasks efficiently. Parental attitudes did not show any associations with the socio-emotional development of children.

Conclusions. Parental attitudes play a significant role in child development. The belief in the need to structure the child’s environment may have positive effects on the child’s cognitive development. However, it does not affect social-emotional development. On the other hand, the belief in the need for spontaneous activity is more likely to be associated with lower levels of executive functioning in the child.

Background. Applied for defensive justification of immoral actions, the mechanisms of moral disengagement (MD), on the one hand, provoke unethical behaviour, and on the other hand, prevent its direct correction. Thus, the study of the factors underlying these mechanisms is relevant from both theoretical and practical points of view.

Objective. The aim of the study is to identify cognitive and personal factors in the choice of MD strategies (loci).

Study Participants. The study involved 618 respondents aged 17 to 52 years (M = 23.08, SD = 6.32), including 450 women; 410 are students from various universities and specialties, 208 are employees of enterprises and organizations of various profiles.

Methods. Data were collected using valid questionnaires: Short Scale of Moral Disengagement, Dark Tetrad Short Questionnaire, Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy, and Short Form of the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire.

Results. It was found that the most preferred MD strategy is the locus of victim, and the least preferred one is the disregard (or distortion) of the behaviour consequences locus. The main personality predictors of MD are high values of psychopathy and Machiavellianism, as well as low empathy and a weak ability to recognize one’s own feelings. The contribution of personality traits is most significant for the integrative indicator of MD and its behavioral locus, and the least significant for the actor locus (situational justification of immoral acts). Distortion of the victim image is better predicted by the "dark" traits—psychopathy and Machiavellianism—than by low empathy and emotional intelligence. On the contrary, the distortion of the behaviour consequences is better predicted by cognitive empathy and worse by the expression of "dark" traits.

Conclusions. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that moral disengagement most often manifests itself through the defense mechanism of victim blaming, which is likely due to the greater cognitive ease of its formation. The contributions of personality traits, empathy, and emotional intelligence to different loci of MD vary in strength and quality. Thus, the behaviour locus is determined to a greater extent by personality characteristics, the actor locus by cognitive qualities, and the victim locus is determined by both personality and cognitive peculiarities. The discovered patterns can be useful in practical work with beliefs that justify immoral behaviour.