Percieved Parenting Styles, Moral Disengagement, and Prosocial Behaviour of University Students

Abstract

This research study aimed to investigate the relationship between parenting styles, moral disengagement, and prosocial behavior among university students, and to explore the mediating role of moral disengagement. The sample of participants were N=319 among which there were male students (n=151) and female students (n=167). The age of the participants were 18-27 years old. The three measures used were the Parenting Style Inventory II (PSI-II) (Darling & Toyokawa, 1997) which measured authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful parenting style. The Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement Scale (Bandura., 1996), and the Prosocialness Scale for Adults (Caprara et.al, 2005). The reliability of all the scales is sound and satisfactory. The results showed that authoritative parenting style has a significant negative relationship with moral disengagement. Permissive parenting style has a significant positive correlation with prosocial behavior and neglectful parenting style has a significant positive relationship with moral disengagement. It was also found that moral disengagement had mediating role in the relationship between authoritative parenting and neglectful parenting style. The mediation was nonsignificant with permissive and authoritarian parenting style. Nonsignificant relationship was also found between authoritative parenting style and prosocial behavior, permissive parenting style and moral disengagement, neglectful parenting style with prosocial behavior, and of authoritarian parenting style with moral disengagement and prosocial behavior