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SUNDAYREVIEW | OPINION | NYT NOW
Raising a Moral Child
By ADAM GRANT APRIL 11, 2014
What does it take to be a good parent? We know some of the tricks for
teaching kids to become high achievers. For example, research suggests
that when parents praise effort rather than ability, children develop a
stronger work ethic and become more motivated.
Yet although some parents live vicariously through their childrens
accomplishments, success is not the No. 1 priority for most parents. Were
much more concerned about our children becoming kind, compassionate
and helpful. Surveys reveal that in the United States, parents from
European, Asian, Hispanic and African ethnic groups all place far greater
importance on caring than achievement. These patterns hold around the
world: When people in 50 countries were asked to report their guiding
principles in life, the value that mattered most was not achievement, but
caring.
Despite the significance that it holds in our lives, teaching children to
care about others is no simple task. In an Israeli study of nearly 600
families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to
raise children who shared those values.
Are some children simply good-natured or not? For the past decade,
Ive been studying the surprising success of people who frequently help
others without any strings attached. As the father of two daughters and a
son, Ive become increasingly curious about how these generous tendencies
develop.
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Genetic twin studies suggest that anywhere from a quarter to more
than half of our propensity to be giving and caring is inherited. That leaves
a lot of room for nurture, and the evidence on how parents raise kind and
compassionate children flies in the face of what many of even the most
well-intentioned parents do in praising good behavior, responding to bad
behavior, and communicating their values.
By age 2, children experience some moral emotions feelings
triggered by right and wrong. To reinforce caring as the right behavior,
research indicates, praise is more effective than rewards. Rewards run the
risk of leading children to be kind only when a carrot is offered, whereas
praise communicates that sharing is intrinsically worthwhile for its own
sake. But what kind of praise should we give when our children show early
signs of generosity?
Many parents believe its important to compliment the behavior, not
the child that way, the child learns to repeat the behavior. Indeed, I
know one couple who are careful to say, That was such a helpful thing to
do, instead of, Youre a helpful person.
But is that the right approach? In a clever experiment, the researchers
Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler set out to investigate what happens when
we commend generous behavior versus generous character. After 7- and 8-
year-olds won marbles and donated some to poor children, the
experimenter remarked, Gee, you shared quite a bit.
The researchers randomly assigned the children to receive different
types of praise. For some of the children, they praised the action: It was
good that you gave some of your marbles to those poor children. Yes, that
was a nice and helpful thing to do. For others, they praised the character
behind the action: I guess youre the kind of person who likes to help
others whenever you can. Yes, you are a very nice and helpful person.
A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give
and share, the children were much more generous after their character
had been praised than after their actions had been. Praising their
character helped them internalize it as part of their identities. The
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children learned who they were from observing their own actions: I am a
helpful person. This dovetails with new research led by the psychologist
Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviors, nouns work
better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than
inviting them to help, it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage
them to be a helper. Cheating was cut in half when instead of, Please
dont cheat, participants were told, Please dont be a cheater. When our
actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward
the moral and generous choices. Over time it can become part of us.
Praise appears to be particularly influential in the critical periods
when children develop a stronger sense of identity. When the researchers
Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler praised the character of 5-year-olds, any
benefits that may have emerged didnt have a lasting impact: They may
have been too young to internalize moral character as part of a stable sense
of self. And by the time children turned 10, the differences between
praising character and praising actions vanished: Both were effective.
Tying generosity to character appears to matter most around age 8, when
children may be starting to crystallize notions of identity.
Praise in response to good behavior may be half the battle, but our
responses to bad behavior have consequences, too. When children cause
harm, they typically feel one of two moral emotions: shame or guilt.
Despite the common belief that these emotions are interchangeable,
research led by the psychologist June Price Tangney reveals that they have
very different causes and consequences.
Shame is the feeling that I am a bad person, whereas guilt is the
feeling that I have done a bad thing. Shame is a negative judgment about
the core self, which is devastating: Shame makes children feel small and
worthless, and they respond either by lashing out at the target or escaping
the situation altogether. In contrast, guilt is a negative judgment about an
action, which can be repaired by good behavior. When children feel guilt,
they tend to experience remorse and regret, empathize with the person
they have harmed, and aim to make it right.
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In one study spearheaded by the psychologist Karen Caplovitz Barrett,
parents rated their toddlers tendencies to experience shame and guilt at
home. The toddlers received a rag doll, and the leg fell off while they were
playing with it alone. The shame-prone toddlers avoided the researcher
and did not volunteer that they broke the doll. The guilt-prone toddlers
were more likely to fix the doll, approach the experimenter, and explain
what happened. The ashamed toddlers were avoiders; the guilty toddlers
were amenders.
If we want our children to care about others, we need to teach them to
feel guilt rather than shame when they misbehave. In a review of research
on emotions and moral development, the psychologist Nancy Eisenberg
suggests that shame emerges when parents express anger, withdraw their
love, or try to assert their power through threats of punishment: Children
may begin to believe that they are bad people. Fearing this effect, some
parents fail to exercise discipline at all, which can hinder the development
of strong moral standards.
The most effective response to bad behavior is to express
disappointment. According to independent reviews by Professor Eisenberg
and David R. Shaffer, parents raise caring children by expressing
disappointment and explaining why the behavior was wrong, how it
affected others, and how they can rectify the situation. This enables
children to develop standards for judging their actions, feelings of
empathy and responsibility for others, and a sense of moral identity, which
are conducive to becoming a helpful person. The beauty of expressing
disappointment is that it communicates disapproval of the bad behavior,
coupled with high expectations and the potential for improvement: Youre
a good person, even if you did a bad thing, and I know you can do better.
As powerful as it is to criticize bad behavior and praise good
character, raising a generous child involves more than waiting for
opportunities to react to the actions of our children. As parents, we want to
be proactive in communicating our values to our children. Yet many of us
do this the wrong way.
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In a classic experiment, the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton gave 140
elementary- and middle-school-age children tokens for winning a game,
which they could keep entirely or donate some to a child in poverty. They
first watched a teacher figure play the game either selfishly or generously,
and then preach to them the value of taking, giving or neither. The adults
influence was significant: Actions spoke louder than words. When the
adult behaved selfishly, children followed suit. The words didnt make
much difference children gave fewer tokens after observing the adults
selfish actions, regardless of whether the adult verbally advocated
selfishness or generosity. When the adult acted generously, students gave
the same amount whether generosity was preached or not they donated
85 percent more than the norm in both cases. When the adult preached
selfishness, even after the adult acted generously, the students still gave 49
percent more than the norm. Children learn generosity not by listening to
what their role models say, but by observing what they do.
To test whether these role-modeling effects persisted over time, two
months later researchers observed the children playing the game again.
Would the modeling or the preaching influence whether the children gave
and would they even remember it from two months earlier?
The most generous children were those who watched the teacher give
but not say anything. Two months later, these children were 31 percent
more generous than those who observed the same behavior but also heard
it preached. The message from this research is loud and clear: If you dont
model generosity, preaching it may not help in the short run, and in the
long run, preaching is less effective than giving while saying nothing at all.
People often believe that character causes action, but when it comes to
producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes
character. As the psychologist Karl Weick is fond of asking, How can I
know who I am until I see what I do? How can I know what I value until I
see where I walk?
Adam Grant is a professor of management and psychology at the
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of
4/14/2014 Raising a Moral Child - NYTimes.com
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Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.
Adam Grant is a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania and the author of Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 13, 2014, on page SR1 of the New York edition with
the headline: Raising a Moral Child.
2014 The New York Times Company