Parental Psychological Control and Children's Pro-social Behavior: A Mediating Role of Gratitude a Moral Emotion

Parents are considered as the most important factor in socializing children and adolescents. Researches has confirmed the effectiveness of gratitude on the pro-social behavior; hence the purpose of this study is to explain the relationship between parent’s psychological control and children’s pro-social behavior by the mediation of the gratitude.

The research method is a descriptive correlation study. The statistical population of the study included all high school students in Yazd in the academic year ‎2020-2021‎. The sample size was 350 people who were selected with the multi-stage cluster sampling method and 308 people completed the questionnaires. Research Measurement included Dependency-Oriented and Achievement-Oriented Psychological Control Scale (Soenens et al, 2010), Multi-component Gratitude Measure (Morgan et al, 2017) and Pro-social Tendencies Measures (Carlo & Randall, 2002) that have been completed by students. 

The findings using structural equation modeling showed that final model has a good fitness. Also, findings of research hypothesis analysis showed that psychological control of parents could negatively and statistically significant predict pro-social behavior and relationship between gratitude and pro-social behavior was negatively and significant Moreover, the mediation role of gratitude in the relationship between parental psychological control and pro-social behavior was confirmed.

According to the research findings, it can be concluded that less psychological control of parents in the family context, and more children's skills in gratitude, can promotes their pro-social behavior.