NEW YORK: Parents, take note. Your less affectionate and harsher behaviour towards your children can make them aggressive and anti-social, a new study has found.

The findings suggest that less parental warmth and more harshness in the home environment affect how aggressive children become and whether they lack empathy and a moral compass -- a set of characteristics known as callous-unemotional (CU) traits.

"The study convincingly shows that parenting -- and not just genes -- contributes to the development of risky callous-unemotional traits," said co-author Luke Hyde, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, US.

"Because identical twins have the same DNA, we can be more sure that the differences in parenting the twins received affects the development of these traits," Hyde added.

Read the full article at The Economic Times.