Parental personality and parenting behavior have been associated with the development of psychopathic traits in offspring. However, no study has examined the effect of parental dispositional selfishness on the development of psychopathic traits in offspring, and the potential mechanism underlying this relationship. To address this issue, parents' reports on their dispositional selfishness, negative and positive parenting behavior, and child's psychopathic traits were collected for a group of children from the community (n = 118, 47% male, mean age = 14.1 years). Results showed that parental selfishness was associated with grandiose-manipulative (GM), daring-impulsive (DI), and callous-unemotional (CU) traits in children. In addition, the egocentric selfishness-GM relationship was indirectly mediated by parenting behavior including lack of involvement, poor monitoring, and inconsistent discipline, whereas the association with CU traits was directly mediated by lack of involvement. These effects remained significant after controlling for child's sex, age, race, social adversity, and a prior measure of psychopathic traits. Findings provide initial empirical evidence on the effect of parental selfishness on a child's psychopathic traits, and further support to the proposition that distinct etiology may underlie different dimensions of psychopathic traits.

中文翻译：

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自私的父母、养育方式和儿童的心理变态特征

父母的个性和养育行为与后代精神病特征的发展有关。然而，没有研究检查过父母自私对后代精神病特征发展的影响，以及这种关系的潜在机制。为了解决这个问题，我们收集了来自社区的一组儿童的父母关于他们的性格自私、消极和积极的养育行为以及儿童心理变态特征的报告（n = 118，47% 为男性，平均年龄 = 14.1 岁）。结果表明，父母的自私与孩子的浮夸操纵（GM）、大胆冲动（DI）和冷酷无情（CU）特征有关。此外，以自我为中心的自私-GM 关系是由育儿行为间接介导的，包括缺乏参与、监督不力和纪律不一致，而与 CU 特征的关联则直接由缺乏参与介导。在控制了儿童的性别、年龄、种族、社会逆境和心理变态特征的先前测量后，这些影响仍然显着。研究结果提供了关于父母自私对儿童精神病特征影响的初步经验证据，并进一步支持了不同病因可能构成精神病特征不同维度的命题。