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Opinionator | The Great Divide: Parental

Involvement Is Overrated APRIL 12, 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
By ADAM GRANT APRIL 11, 2014
SundayReview | OPINION
Raising a Moral Child
Rutu Modan
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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
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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
Rutu Modan
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Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of
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. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe
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