Appropriate Parenting Style to Improve Offspring's Creativity Differs Depending on the Offspring's Empathizing-Systemizing Cognitive Style: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study.

Previous research by Mehrinejad et al. found that parenting style affects offspring's brain development which later determines their creativity. They show that there is a significant positive relationship between authoritative parenting style and creativity. Meanwhile, neuroimaging studies by Takeuchi et al. have explained that offspring's creativity also differs depending on their empathizing-systemizing cognitive style. They show that both EQ and SQ were significantly and positively correlated with creativity. Combining the previous studies, we hypothesize that there exists an effect of the positive interaction between parenting style and the offspring's E-S cognitive style on the offspring's brain development and creativity. Whereas previous research on the offspring's creativity has focused on one dimension only, in the current study, for the first time, we investigated the effect of the interaction between parenting style and the offspring's E-S cognitive style on the offspring's brain development and creativity. We used voxel-based morphometry and questionnaires to investigate the gray matter correlates of the interaction between parenting style and the offspring's E-S cognitive style. With 675 healthy participants (average: 20 years old), using cross-sectional whole-brain multiple regression, we found significant interactive effects between parenting style and offspring's E-S cognitive style on regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the right supramarginal gyrus (R-SMG). We also found that the rGMV in the R-SMG was significantly and positively correlated with the offspring's originality/fluency scores, a dimension of creativity. Our findings suggest that offsprings who are raised with the appropriate parenting style according to their E-S cognitive style have a larger rGMV in the R-SMG. These offsprings exhibit a higher level of creativity, especially originality in divergent thinking, the ability to generate an idea that is different from that of others. In the future, we hope this research can provide critical information for parents regarding the parenting style that suits their offspring's E-S cognitive style to improve offspring's creativity and quality of life.