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

purpose: 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. methodology: 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.