The role of theory of mind and empathy in predicting behavioral emotional problems in students from typical and single parent (The case of divorce) families

The present study was to investigating the role of theory of mind and empathy in predicting behavioral-emotional problems in students from typical and divorce families that done the cause-comparison and correlation method.
The subjects were 293 of the girl students of fifth and sixth grades Which were selected by multi-stage cluttering sampling method. The tools are three questionnaires: theory of mind, empathy, and Child Behavior Checklist. For analyzing the data, multiple regression method, multi variable variance analysis test and Fisher’s Z-test formula has been used.
Findings: The results show that the theory of mind is capable to predict behavioral-emotional problems in students from typical families, but not those of the students from divorce families. No meaningful relationship has been observed between the empathy capability and behavioral-emotional problems from none of the two groups of students. Results also show students from divorce families demonstrate more behavioral-emotional problems. Comparing the correlation between the theory of mind and empathy with behavioral-emotional problems in students shows that the correlations gained from the two groups show no meaningful statistical difference.