14 ms·

Raising a moral child

285 points by sanoli 13y ago

oliyoung 13y ago
That made a lot of sense, especially when illustrated with the "that was a bad thing to do" rather than the "you're a bad person for doing that"
- dulse 13y ago
  Yes, that part seems really important, defining the separation between the things that you do and your sense of self identity sounds like it's a critical part of creating a healthy sense of self esteem. Looking inward it feels like I still struggle with this pattern of thinking sometimes, as I suspect many people do (the feeling of "that project failed" vs. "I'm a failure, this project is evidence of this fact" is worlds apart).
mrcactu5 13y ago
I grew up and live in New York City - where people are not very caring. But how do we measure that? In an Israeli study of nearly 600 families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to raise children who shared those values. How do you quantify kindness and compassion?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Shivetya 13y ago
  are they unfriendly or merely conditioned to look away?
- VLM 13y ago
  Confusing "valuing" and "are". For mere valuing a simple survey should be adequate. An analogy would be valuing wealth while being poor. Or innumerable examples of reportedly valuing a certain religion's beliefs, yet ridiculously bad, often opposite, implementation of those beliefs.
jawns 13y ago
The experiments this op-ed describes are really neat. I especially like the one that demonstrates the importance of "practice what you preach." Here's another cool experiment related to social/moral development, which you can perform on your own kid: Have two grown-up friends each show your baby a toy. The first friend should offer the toy to your kid but then retract the offer and keep the toy to himself. The second friend should offer the toy to your kid but "accidentally" drop it out of reach. Now, give your baby a different toy, and then prompt her to share it with one of the friends. Your baby is very likely to share it with the friend who dropped the toy, rather than the one who withdrew the toy. The above experiment is based on a 2010 study involving 21-month-olds. It found that two-thirds of the kids shared with the person who dropped the toy -- and the other third kept the toy to themselves. Not a single one shared with the person who offered the toy then retracted the offer. (I talk about this more in "Experimenting With Babies" http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com) Not only is this fascinating because it shows that babies act preferentially toward people who are kind to them ... but it holds true EVEN IF the person who initiates a kind act is unable to complete it, but demonstrates the proper intent. Think about the complexity of the cognitive processes that are going on in that evaluation. It's amazing!
- cstavish 13y ago
  Who would have thought that 21-month-olds are predisposed to Kantian ethics?
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    Philosophy: how does it work? Hint: its true even if babies haven't figured it out yet.
    - tel 13y ago
      Well, should you take a cultural relativist POV then there's nothing "true" about Kantian ethics—it's a choice of values. It's interesting to see 21mo behavior selecting for those values. If you take the deontological view then this is still a fairly complex behavior to execute. To consider whether this sort of judgement is one that should be fairly placed on the 21mo if it did the same is a challenging mental task. So, perhaps babies are predisposed to heuristics which favor the categorical imperative. That'd be interesting and certainly worth surprise.
bdg 13y ago
For anyone who wants to know more about the topic: Adam Grant (the author) has been doing a lot of work around this concept of "givers" as a personal trait and how behaviors around the actions of giving/taking/matching results in various levels of success or early indicators for other things. This article is really a subset of his research applied to just this one case.
- a2kadet 13y ago
  I just finished his book Give and Take. It was a great read.
sharemywin 13y ago
I didn't get the don't be a cheater part. seemed like that would cause shame instead of guilt and confilted with the rule praise the child as a good person. expect them to do better when they do bad and seperate the bad action with fromt the good person. With hard worker being a good trait.
- mherdeg 13y ago
  Sure, so the author's advice boils down to: (1) If your child does something good, DO tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does good things (praise character). DON'T let them think that they're merely a person who did a good thing (praise behavior). (2) If your child does something bad, DON'T tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does bad things (shame). DO tell them that they did a bad thing (guilt). The situation is vaguely reminiscent of that old social psychology favorite, "fundamental attribution error", which is about how when other people do bad things, we blame internal traits, but when we do bad things, we blame external factors.
  - jawns 13y ago
    This is a good breakdown, but to address sharemywin's question: When you tell your child "don't be a cheater," the focus is on character. You don't want them to do things that a person with bad character does. When your child cheats, on the other hand, you say, "I'm disappointed, because I know you have a good character, but your action didn't reflect that." So, the focus is on the bad action, rather than the character. Is some of this mere semantics? Possibly. If a person who does bad things can be a person of good character, and a person who does bad things can be a person of bad character, then how do we tell the difference between a person of good character and a person of bad character except by their actions? But, if we're merely talking about what strategy is effective, then we can indeed say to focus on character when praising and on the action when admonishing.
    - Terr_ 13y ago
      Yeah, it's a matter of past-vs-future. Identity is important, but when a child makes a mistake you don't want to "lock it in" by confirming it as an unalterable quality.
taybin 13y ago
Oh good. More ways I can mis-raise my child. I complimented the object instead of the subject in a sentence! Oh shiiiiiiit. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/new-parenting-study-released.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/new-par...
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  Don't know why you're being downvoted. As a parent, every single time I read something about 'raising your kids X', Dr. Lipschitz (from The Rugrats) comes to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTesmh1wpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTesmh1wpI
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    Probably because most of this is common sense that you do anyway. Generally speaking, you don't tell you child that he's and evil human being because he didn't pick up his toys. But you want a kid to self-identify as a "good" person, and do what good people do. For most folks, this stuff either happens pretty naturally, or the parents adapt as their kid learns how to game them.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    I would say that, no, parents should not be expected to internalize all of the thousands of different things we're finding out about the best ways to raise kids. It's far too much to know, and the knowledge is currently too tentative. But, it's also pointless to bring that up every time a new study comes out, because these things are good to know. That's probably why the GP is catching downvotes.
    - taybin 13y ago
      I've seen how parents can get amazingly OCD with these studies. They'll form cliques and look down on parents who don't perform what the current best practice is. Because of that, I think it always bears repeating.
  - taybin 13y ago
amirmc 13y ago
Reading this, I'm pretty sure I can apply it to adult contexts too. Think about all the cases in organisations where 'values' are touted but the behaviour of people tells you how you really get ahead. Everything here is useful if you care about the organisational culture you want to create.
- truelson 13y ago
  Funny you should say this. The author Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton and has a book called "Give and Take" that talks about a lot of this. And unlike most business books, it's all backed up with well researched data.
  - tunap 13y ago
    I know of three people who have been severely injured from a project I walked off last year. The Fortune 20 company's guidelines(and national safety codes) were ignored in their entirety. The project manager who was going to save $4.5 million at the risk of others' welfare is now shopping for bids to "do it by the book". Apparently his plausible deniability has sprung a leak or one or more of the injured have lawyered up. Vindication is bitter-sweet.
mcv 13y ago
Man, I just learned to compliment actions rather than talent, and now I have to do it the other way around. I get why, though. Moral actions are choices. Being smart isn't. If you praise a kid for being smart, he won't be able to choose to be smart. Instead, he'll assume he's smart and won't have to work so hard. I suppose praising an innate tendency to work hard might be more effective.
- VLM 13y ago
  Some of the article seems more obvious if flipped around... watch some teens/kids tease each other, you'll hear a lot of language along the lines of one kid defining what the other kid "is", not much oblique talk about the success or failure of one individual purchase of clothing to match their current little tribal affiliation. Enforcement of conformity is enforcement of conformity, regardless of the morals/ethics of the conformity itself, so a study of it is incomplete if it only includes the behaviors of the happy sunshine people or only includes parent/child interactions. The interesting part of the article was the quantitative analysis of experimental evidence, not so much that evolution seems to have produced a species that's pretty good at tribal-scale interpersonal dynamics and learning everything by copying superiors. The qualitative analysis seems obvious given the model, so good experimental numbers indicates the popular qualitative model is likely correct.
- shellerik 13y ago
  Your comment really made me stop and think. It does seem like a contradiction at first: when your child does something good praise their character not their action, when your child does something well praise the action rather than calling them smart or talented. After some thought though I can see it as consistent since when they do something well you can praise them for being hard-working (character).
- Taek 13y ago
  Having worked with kids a lot (long term, I would work with the same kids for 4-5 years and get a long term image of their development), it really seems to me like praising a kid for being smart is going to be better than praising a kid for working hard. This sort of gets coupled with the idea of 'work smarter, not harder.' When a child is praised more substantially for trying hard, you get things like staying up all night studying for a test. When you emphasize being smart and not needing to study, the child is more likely to push themselves such that they can land good grades without needing to study. And this usually manifests as greater attentiveness in class, greater emphasis on figuring out exactly what's going to be on the test, etc. But you also see behaviours like emphasizing getting the right teachers. And the same thing applies to sports. If you emphasize effort, you might get a child practicing repeatedly something that they are already good at. When they are really bad at passing, you get thought patterns like 'at least I'm trying.' When you emphasize being good, the child is more devastated by the idea that they are bad at passing, and they focus their energy on being not bad. The point is that things like being 'smart' and being 'good' are things that you can actually learn, and a lot times, working on what's important is much more important than the overall volume of effort.
breitling 13y ago
There's a lot of overlap here with what Paul Tough says in his book "How children succeed". Basically he also emphasizes the focus on a child's character, but to an extent that they regularly get graded on their character not just their performance academically. It's a great read: http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Character/dp/0544104404 http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Charact...
freditup 13y ago
"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." Probably true, but there's an alternate explanation I think. Praising their character invokes a feel-good, I'm a good person, pride response. Praising their action doesn't nearly as much. People like the reward of the 'I'm a great person' feeling and thus are more likely to be nice if this is the result.
jessriedel 13y ago
Has anyone see discussion about the relation of these kind of empirical ideas to virtue ethics?
hypertexthero 13y ago
One can start by not associating oneself (and thus one's child) with words such as 'Israeli', 'British', 'Catholic', 'Hindu', 'Communist', etc. "The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time." -- Jiddu Krishnamurti [Think on These Things, Chapter 1](http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things/1963-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-think-on-these-things-chapter-1 http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things/1...) [Some info from UNSECO Bureau of Education on Krishnamurti](http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/krishnamurtie.pdf http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/krishnamu...)
lightyrs 13y ago
IANAP, however, the entire concept of performing 'experiments' on your child is repugnant to me.
- vectorpush 13y ago
  Why?
  - lightyrs 13y ago
    Because a child cannot give consent.
    - smtddr 13y ago
      Note that in reality, all parents are experimenting. Nobody _knows_ the right way to raise a child. I'm the father of a 3yr daughter but I dare not claim that my way is the right way...
      - lightyrs 13y ago
        There's a difference between 'experimenting' and experimenting. The explicit variation is what I'm referring to — and I don't think it's a matter of semantics. It's the intention that I'm taking issue with.
    - sokoloff 13y ago
      They can't give consent to what they eat, when they go to bed, where they live/vacation, when/whether they see a doctor, whether they are vaccinated, whether their caregiver drives obeying all traffic laws/not drinking, etc, either. I believe that parents (/guardians) have responsibility for the children and that responsibility logically extends to giving consent for choices like this. My mother performed "experiments" on me in conjunction with her master's degree work in education; I was probably 8-10. It was clearly her call; I couldn't give fully informed consent, but there wasn't any risk of physical harm and vanishingly small risk of any possible harm, so I believe her consent by proxy was appropriate.
thesigil 13y ago
Hi, I am not a parent, but I think I have to put across this point of the way of looking at morality being independent of "free will", because "free will" is an illusion and the illusion of "free will" is also an illusion. The non-existence of free will should not be confused with fatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism. Morality and love and compassion can still be quantified without free will. What goes away are actually the negative feelings like hatred, anger and pride and shame. Let us take a simple thought experiment. Let me ask you to choose a book. Let us make it simple, let us remove all the books that you do not know about, and just consider the books that you are aware of being great. If you have already chosen one, drop it as it is wrong, don't ask me how, but I know, and this time be sensitive to the process of choosing a book. This is the most freest of choice that you ever will get to make, so free will better be here or else it is no where. Do you observe that there is a certain gap from the time I ask you to pick a book, and then there is certain gap and then suddenly there are a list of books in your mind. There is no way you can explain why you didn't think of The Godfather even though you know it is a great book. Let us say you thought about Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman and Seven years in Tibet. You have just finished one book in the series of Harry Potter and you are not interested in reading fiction again, so eliminate that, then you are only left with Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and Seven years in Tibet, say you like reading biographies so you chose Seven years in Tibet and Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, now when you have only these two options and there is no coherent opposition that is present in the system, only then comes the free aspect. There is still no way you can explain why you did not think otherwise, of choosing another book in the series of Harry Potter and reading more fiction. So where is the free will here? All of this still does not eradicate the feeling of love and compassion we feel and does not make everyone guilty by reason of insanity. All of this is much more well articulated by Sam Harris who holds a Ph.D in neurobiology and graduate in Philosophy. He talks about the delusion of free will at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk Here is another piece of his work where he promotes scientific thinking and argues that moral questions are best pursued using, not just philosophy, but methods of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape
- 13y ago
nevinera 13y ago
Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. 'Tricks' and 'techniques' abound, and every other article is about 'teaching' your child to achieve/empathize/compete. You know what works extra- extra- well? Be the kind of person you want your kids to be. Treat them like a decent person treats other decent people and that's the behavior they will learn. Your kids are way smarter than you think. They know what you're doing, they know you're trying to encourage certain behaviors, and they eventually know how to manipulate you much more effectively than you know how to manipulate them. Quit treating five-year-olds like they're some kind of resistant clay, and you have to cleverly shape them into the person they're going to be. That kid is already a person. Treating him like a puppy to be trained will certainly affect his personality and behavior, but the largest impact will not be the one you intended. You're teaching them how you want them to be, and you're also teaching them that the way to get what you want is to manipulate people into giving it to you.
- kemayo 13y ago
  Yes, that's a good trick to use. The article actually covers this, note. The entire last section is about how children watch adults and decide based on their actions how they should act, paying comparatively little attention to their words.
  - nevinera 13y ago
    It's not a trick. Be a good person, and treat your children like people.
    - hamburglar 13y ago
      Sounds like a trick to me. What, I'm supposed to be a good person just for my kids' sake? Yeah, right, buddy! ;)
- AJ007 13y ago
  The best thing my parents did was be consistent. Early on I learned how to behave because I could predict my parent's reactions. How can a child learn to behave when all adult figures are erratic and irrational? Even the smallest things, like telling a kid Santa Claus is real can cause them to discount the value of truth. Reading behavioral psychology studies should require a skeptics hat. I'm not calling out these specific studies, but when it comes to miniscule sample sizes, unreproducible and sometimes out right made up results, this area is very suspect due to ease of fudging results. (Diederik Stapel comes to mind as an extreme case.)
Taek 13y ago
What stood out the most to me was the distinction between guilt and shame. When you belittle a child and insult their character, they're less likely to make amends and more likely to withdraw. I draw parallels to the way we treat criminals in our society. We cast them out and question their character and distance them from ourselves. This dumps a lot of shame on them, and might produce the same results as seen with the children; rather than feel guilt and make amends, they feel shame and withdraw.
Fasebook 13y ago
This is not an article I would go to NYTimes to read.
- __david__ 13y ago
  Why?
  - pnut 13y ago
    because subliminal liberal mind control, duh!
mathattack 13y ago
There is some irony of an article about generosity coming from a Wharton professor. :-) I do like the outcome though - model the behaviors that you want your kids to follow.
TempleOSV2 13y ago
My sister said her boys could not have toy guns. "Mommy guess what this stick is?" One said. Liberals are proud of heart. They are buffoons. Imagine if the Pope wrote a new Bible for a thousand years.
jgalt212 13y ago
I would like to raise a moral child, and I aim to do so, but I'm sure they'll be less successful for it. In today's oligarchy it seems like the great majority of successful people today are either criminals or general pieces of shit. Now, of course, being a success is not the end all and be all, but seeing your skills greatly outdistance your results can be quite frustrating.
- abarringer 13y ago
  That only makes sense if by "being a success" means having more stuff then the next guy. I'd prefer to define success differently. If I had all the worlds goods/power and treated others like dirt I'd chalk myself up as a total loss.
jostylr 13y ago
Father of recent 3 year old. Big believer in modeling. I see other parents tell their kids to clean up, put stuff away, etc. I simply embrace cleaning up and my daughter follows suit quite often. We also do whatever we can to enable her to participate in what we are doing (sadly computers are a big problem in that regard, much more than say chopping with a knife). Our kid is very well-behaved and cautious (except for tired/hungry breakdowns, of course). I am also a big believer in the see-what happens school of action. Other parents are always encouraging (yelling at) their kids to share, particularly in support of aggressive children trying to take from their child. We believe in letting children experiment and realize that sharing leads to fun, greediness not so much. We demonstrate the power of choosing not to play others which is really the best way of handling unpleasant people/situations. But at the heart of it all is simply being, authentically, the kind of person you want your child to be. They are programmed to learn actual behavior from their parents who 1) have been successful enough to reproduce and 2) have a similar genetic makeup meaning their behaviors are likely to be compatible with the kid's abilities. So be a better person and relax. Oh, and look into Sudbury education for your kids which really teaches them how to be moral in a community.
- jawns 13y ago
  From Wikipedia: "At a Sudbury school, students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by direct democracy in which students and staff are equals. Students individually decide what to do with their time, and tend to learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized instruction. This is a form of democratic education." Hey, I'm open to using a child's own interests to help them learn ... but Sudbury takes a good thing way too far. You say that Sudbury teaches kids how to be moral in a community. Maybe ... if that community is "Lord of the Flies."
  - jostylr 13y ago
    The wikipedia quote is correct. Your assessment seems to be not based on anything. Ask yourself, what is harder to learn: (1) knowing who you are and how to work with others or (2) solving an algebraic equation? They pretty much all learn how to read, write, do arithmetic. Those who want to go to college (about 80%) do so without difficulty, learning what they need in a few months. They are serious, engaged students in college because they know why they are there. They find college kids goofing off to be quite a mystery. They are free to become themselves when they are supposed to -- puberty. That's what that stage is for. Most schools prevent the self-exploration that is necessary to allow for that. So then it gets delayed until people's 20s. -- Visit such a school and you will see that they are much less nasty than those in a public school. Bullying is virtually unheard of. They work together as a community and take responsibility for it. They are collectively responsible for all the policing and judgement of others as well as themselves. They adjudicate quite fairly. I saw 8 year olds wrestling with determining an appropriate punishment for their friend vs. their own desire to help their friend. They really struggled to find a balance. 8 year olds. This is an issue that a lot of adults struggle with. They also write themselves up when they break a rule. They all buy into building a community. The school I visited was full of energy and respect. So you can either choose to believe the fiction of "Lord of the Flies" or believe the results of forty years of actual experience with the model.
MarkPNeyer 13y ago
i had to learn the opposite message here. our society tells us so much stuff about being kind and caring, and there are very few messages about being able to stick up for yourself, being able to make reasonable requests and being able to say no to people who are not treating you fairly. i had a roommate who didn't pay rent. i couldn't bring myself to confront the roommate because i felt like i "made of lot of money" and they didn't make much money and they had problems. i imagined them arguing with me and was scared and hurt by this image; i have no way to tell someone 'i deserve what i have and you don't' because i know i was born into a loving family that raised me and took care of me and pushed me to succeed. i can't take credit for those things. i finally had to tell myself "it's not just ok to put yourself first. you have to insist on it; if you don't get rent from your roommate, you're letting them take from the people you love took; when your roommate doesn't pay rent, they are ruining your mood which hurts your friends and family." it's hard. i finally said 'fuck being a good person, i'll do what i want and what benefits me and those i love.' this doesn't mean i go around being an ass to people all the time; i'm still generous when i tip and i try to look out for people. but now i'm different. if i sense someone is trying to abuse or push me around at all, i see them as a predator. when homeless people asking for money used to make me feel like a bad person for being successful, now i see them as predators who use negative emotions to try and take my positive feelings away. yes, they're suffering. but i can't help them, and giving them money doesn't help them either. show your kids how to be good, sure. but for god's sake teach them to say no to people who make unreasonable requests, and give them practice asking for things they are owed.
- jeffdavis 13y ago
  I think you are trying to separate things into "morally good" and "morally bad" that are really just morally neutral. If your roommate isn't paying you rent, kicking him out is a neutral course of action in most cases.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Don't go so far as to say "fuck being a good person", but understand that not everyone deserves unlimited trust and good faith. --which is I think what most of your comment is expressing. Your story is the topic of one of the most famous West End /Broadway songs of recent years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h1eBEmY6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h1eBEmY6U Even if you find that life's not fair, it Doesn't mean that you just have to grin and bear it If you always take it on the chin and wear it Nothing will change Even if you're little you can do a lot, you Mustn't let a little thing like little stop you If you sit around and let them get on top, you Might as well be saying you think that it's OK > homeless people asking for money ... i see them as predators who use negative emotions to try and take my positive feelings away. Or they are asking for money who using asking for money as a way to get money. Your "predator" description fits panhandlers with manipulative stories, but not all "homeless people asking for money". Also, it's worth considering , if someone is telling you a story that upsets you, but is a true story, maybe the negative feelins you feel are appropriate, and there is something wrong with economic inequality.
gregwebs 13y ago
Why limit these concepts to raising children? It seems like they should apply to adult interactions as well.
trackofalljades 13y ago
I find this article directly interesting, as a parent, but also sort of "meta" interesting as someone who's always been fascinated by the differences between shame-based societies and guilt-based ones. I'm not discounting the author's insights, but they are very clearly influenced by western thinking.
ldubs16 13y ago
I find this article very interesting because it suggests that the effects of moral attribution to the self vs. the event has the opposite results of achievement attributions. There are numerous studies that show when you praise a child for being smart instead of working hard, they become less curious and motivated. Perhaps this dichotomy is because of the commonly-accepted distinction between talent and work ethic, whereas being good and doing good are largely the same.
m0llusk 13y ago
Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman might be useful in looking at some of these issues. It goes into a lot of detail and refers to many studies, but in short there are ways of helping children to develop executive control which in turn enables them to both decide to do the right thing and follow through.
softatlas 13y ago
Act according to that maxim whereby you might will that it should become universal law. Active and passive forms are quantifiable, testable under contextual and relational analyses (highly frequent circumstantial virtuous, altruistic behavior versus less frequent) of Self and Other. Kant is providing à la Spinoza a chart for the geometry of ethical behavior, so we can treat ethical behavior in terms of non-locality to specific norms — whereas Spinoza does this in terms of a calculus of the emotions w/r/t Self, or the Ethical Self. By Bernard Williams's standard, the amoralist cannot even conceivably have an intermittent feeling of sympathy[0]. The person is at minimum embedded within and embodied by sympathetic behavior (to self or to other), but this is not a necessary condition to morality. At the same time, the kinds of experiments we run, and the types of questions we ask, potentially distill or deauthenticate the model with the widest representation of moral truth — however the narrative of science may belie institutional refactors at meta-ethical descriptions. – [0]: http://bobnoxiousthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/08/challenging-bernard-williams-amoralist.html http://bobnoxiousthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/08/challenging-b...
Im_Talking 13y ago
Haven't read the article as it's probably full of psycho-babble. Just live your life with integrity and the kids will follow. And don't force-feed religion on the poor kids, morals are not from fairy-tales; morals are real. My kids see the value of being moral via me and then these morals are confirmed as they wander thru life.
jboynyc 13y ago
Just for the record, J. Philippe Rushton, whom the op-ed draws on as a classic source of this kind of work in psychology, was a white-supremacist race "scientist" who argued, among other things, that black people have narrower hips because they have smaller brains. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a file on him: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/jean-philippe-rushton http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/pro... While that doesn't invalidate all the findings outlined in the op-ed, it's not exactly confidence inspiring either, as this essay persuasively argues: http://africasacountry.com/the-racesciencefiles-the-new-york-times-edition/ http://africasacountry.com/the-racesciencefiles-the-new-york...

285 points by sanoli 13y ago

That made a lot of sense, especially when illustrated with the "that was a bad thing to do" rather than the "you're a bad person for doing that"

dulse 13y ago
Yes, that part seems really important, defining the separation between the things that you do and your sense of self identity sounds like it's a critical part of creating a healthy sense of self esteem. Looking inward it feels like I still struggle with this pattern of thinking sometimes, as I suspect many people do (the feeling of "that project failed" vs. "I'm a failure, this project is evidence of this fact" is worlds apart).

mrcactu5 13y ago

I grew up and live in New York City - where people are not very caring. But how do we measure that? In an Israeli study of nearly 600 families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to raise children who shared those values. How do you quantify kindness and compassion?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Shivetya 13y ago
are they unfriendly or merely conditioned to look away?
VLM 13y ago
Confusing "valuing" and "are". For mere valuing a simple survey should be adequate. An analogy would be valuing wealth while being poor. Or innumerable examples of reportedly valuing a certain religion's beliefs, yet ridiculously bad, often opposite, implementation of those beliefs.

jawns 13y ago

The experiments this op-ed describes are really neat. I especially like the one that demonstrates the importance of "practice what you preach." Here's another cool experiment related to social/moral development, which you can perform on your own kid: Have two grown-up friends each show your baby a toy. The first friend should offer the toy to your kid but then retract the offer and keep the toy to himself. The second friend should offer the toy to your kid but "accidentally" drop it out of reach. Now, give your baby a different toy, and then prompt her to share it with one of the friends. Your baby is very likely to share it with the friend who dropped the toy, rather than the one who withdrew the toy. The above experiment is based on a 2010 study involving 21-month-olds. It found that two-thirds of the kids shared with the person who dropped the toy -- and the other third kept the toy to themselves. Not a single one shared with the person who offered the toy then retracted the offer. (I talk about this more in "Experimenting With Babies" http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com) Not only is this fascinating because it shows that babies act preferentially toward people who are kind to them ... but it holds true EVEN IF the person who initiates a kind act is unable to complete it, but demonstrates the proper intent. Think about the complexity of the cognitive processes that are going on in that evaluation. It's amazing!

cstavish 13y ago
Who would have thought that 21-month-olds are predisposed to Kantian ethics?
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Philosophy: how does it work? Hint: its true even if babies haven't figured it out yet.
  - tel 13y ago
    Well, should you take a cultural relativist POV then there's nothing "true" about Kantian ethics—it's a choice of values. It's interesting to see 21mo behavior selecting for those values. If you take the deontological view then this is still a fairly complex behavior to execute. To consider whether this sort of judgement is one that should be fairly placed on the 21mo if it did the same is a challenging mental task. So, perhaps babies are predisposed to heuristics which favor the categorical imperative. That'd be interesting and certainly worth surprise.

bdg 13y ago

For anyone who wants to know more about the topic: Adam Grant (the author) has been doing a lot of work around this concept of "givers" as a personal trait and how behaviors around the actions of giving/taking/matching results in various levels of success or early indicators for other things. This article is really a subset of his research applied to just this one case.

a2kadet 13y ago
I just finished his book Give and Take. It was a great read.

sharemywin 13y ago

I didn't get the don't be a cheater part. seemed like that would cause shame instead of guilt and confilted with the rule praise the child as a good person. expect them to do better when they do bad and seperate the bad action with fromt the good person. With hard worker being a good trait.

mherdeg 13y ago
Sure, so the author's advice boils down to: (1) If your child does something good, DO tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does good things (praise character). DON'T let them think that they're merely a person who did a good thing (praise behavior). (2) If your child does something bad, DON'T tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does bad things (shame). DO tell them that they did a bad thing (guilt). The situation is vaguely reminiscent of that old social psychology favorite, "fundamental attribution error", which is about how when other people do bad things, we blame internal traits, but when we do bad things, we blame external factors.
- jawns 13y ago
  This is a good breakdown, but to address sharemywin's question: When you tell your child "don't be a cheater," the focus is on character. You don't want them to do things that a person with bad character does. When your child cheats, on the other hand, you say, "I'm disappointed, because I know you have a good character, but your action didn't reflect that." So, the focus is on the bad action, rather than the character. Is some of this mere semantics? Possibly. If a person who does bad things can be a person of good character, and a person who does bad things can be a person of bad character, then how do we tell the difference between a person of good character and a person of bad character except by their actions? But, if we're merely talking about what strategy is effective, then we can indeed say to focus on character when praising and on the action when admonishing.
  - Terr_ 13y ago
    Yeah, it's a matter of past-vs-future. Identity is important, but when a child makes a mistake you don't want to "lock it in" by confirming it as an unalterable quality.

taybin 13y ago

Oh good. More ways I can mis-raise my child. I complimented the object instead of the subject in a sentence! Oh shiiiiiiit. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/new-parenting-study-released.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/new-par...

sergiotapia 13y ago
Don't know why you're being downvoted. As a parent, every single time I read something about 'raising your kids X', Dr. Lipschitz (from The Rugrats) comes to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTesmh1wpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTesmh1wpI
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Probably because most of this is common sense that you do anyway. Generally speaking, you don't tell you child that he's and evil human being because he didn't pick up his toys. But you want a kid to self-identify as a "good" person, and do what good people do. For most folks, this stuff either happens pretty naturally, or the parents adapt as their kid learns how to game them.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  I would say that, no, parents should not be expected to internalize all of the thousands of different things we're finding out about the best ways to raise kids. It's far too much to know, and the knowledge is currently too tentative. But, it's also pointless to bring that up every time a new study comes out, because these things are good to know. That's probably why the GP is catching downvotes.
  - taybin 13y ago
    I've seen how parents can get amazingly OCD with these studies. They'll form cliques and look down on parents who don't perform what the current best practice is. Because of that, I think it always bears repeating.
- taybin 13y ago

amirmc 13y ago

Reading this, I'm pretty sure I can apply it to adult contexts too. Think about all the cases in organisations where 'values' are touted but the behaviour of people tells you how you really get ahead. Everything here is useful if you care about the organisational culture you want to create.

truelson 13y ago
Funny you should say this. The author Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton and has a book called "Give and Take" that talks about a lot of this. And unlike most business books, it's all backed up with well researched data.
- tunap 13y ago
  I know of three people who have been severely injured from a project I walked off last year. The Fortune 20 company's guidelines(and national safety codes) were ignored in their entirety. The project manager who was going to save $4.5 million at the risk of others' welfare is now shopping for bids to "do it by the book". Apparently his plausible deniability has sprung a leak or one or more of the injured have lawyered up. Vindication is bitter-sweet.

mcv 13y ago

Man, I just learned to compliment actions rather than talent, and now I have to do it the other way around. I get why, though. Moral actions are choices. Being smart isn't. If you praise a kid for being smart, he won't be able to choose to be smart. Instead, he'll assume he's smart and won't have to work so hard. I suppose praising an innate tendency to work hard might be more effective.

VLM 13y ago
Some of the article seems more obvious if flipped around... watch some teens/kids tease each other, you'll hear a lot of language along the lines of one kid defining what the other kid "is", not much oblique talk about the success or failure of one individual purchase of clothing to match their current little tribal affiliation. Enforcement of conformity is enforcement of conformity, regardless of the morals/ethics of the conformity itself, so a study of it is incomplete if it only includes the behaviors of the happy sunshine people or only includes parent/child interactions. The interesting part of the article was the quantitative analysis of experimental evidence, not so much that evolution seems to have produced a species that's pretty good at tribal-scale interpersonal dynamics and learning everything by copying superiors. The qualitative analysis seems obvious given the model, so good experimental numbers indicates the popular qualitative model is likely correct.
shellerik 13y ago
Your comment really made me stop and think. It does seem like a contradiction at first: when your child does something good praise their character not their action, when your child does something well praise the action rather than calling them smart or talented. After some thought though I can see it as consistent since when they do something well you can praise them for being hard-working (character).
Taek 13y ago
Having worked with kids a lot (long term, I would work with the same kids for 4-5 years and get a long term image of their development), it really seems to me like praising a kid for being smart is going to be better than praising a kid for working hard. This sort of gets coupled with the idea of 'work smarter, not harder.' When a child is praised more substantially for trying hard, you get things like staying up all night studying for a test. When you emphasize being smart and not needing to study, the child is more likely to push themselves such that they can land good grades without needing to study. And this usually manifests as greater attentiveness in class, greater emphasis on figuring out exactly what's going to be on the test, etc. But you also see behaviours like emphasizing getting the right teachers. And the same thing applies to sports. If you emphasize effort, you might get a child practicing repeatedly something that they are already good at. When they are really bad at passing, you get thought patterns like 'at least I'm trying.' When you emphasize being good, the child is more devastated by the idea that they are bad at passing, and they focus their energy on being not bad. The point is that things like being 'smart' and being 'good' are things that you can actually learn, and a lot times, working on what's important is much more important than the overall volume of effort.

breitling 13y ago

There's a lot of overlap here with what Paul Tough says in his book "How children succeed". Basically he also emphasizes the focus on a child's character, but to an extent that they regularly get graded on their character not just their performance academically. It's a great read: http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Character/dp/0544104404 http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Charact...

freditup 13y ago

"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." Probably true, but there's an alternate explanation I think. Praising their character invokes a feel-good, I'm a good person, pride response. Praising their action doesn't nearly as much. People like the reward of the 'I'm a great person' feeling and thus are more likely to be nice if this is the result.

jessriedel 13y ago

Has anyone see discussion about the relation of these kind of empirical ideas to virtue ethics?

hypertexthero 13y ago

One can start by not associating oneself (and thus one's child) with words such as 'Israeli', 'British', 'Catholic', 'Hindu', 'Communist', etc. "The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time." -- Jiddu Krishnamurti [Think on These Things, Chapter 1](http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things/1963-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-think-on-these-things-chapter-1 http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things/1...) [Some info from UNSECO Bureau of Education on Krishnamurti](http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/krishnamurtie.pdf http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/krishnamu...)

lightyrs 13y ago

IANAP, however, the entire concept of performing 'experiments' on your child is repugnant to me.

vectorpush 13y ago
Why?
- lightyrs 13y ago
  Because a child cannot give consent.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    Note that in reality, all parents are experimenting. Nobody _knows_ the right way to raise a child. I'm the father of a 3yr daughter but I dare not claim that my way is the right way...
    - lightyrs 13y ago
      There's a difference between 'experimenting' and experimenting. The explicit variation is what I'm referring to — and I don't think it's a matter of semantics. It's the intention that I'm taking issue with.
  - sokoloff 13y ago
    They can't give consent to what they eat, when they go to bed, where they live/vacation, when/whether they see a doctor, whether they are vaccinated, whether their caregiver drives obeying all traffic laws/not drinking, etc, either. I believe that parents (/guardians) have responsibility for the children and that responsibility logically extends to giving consent for choices like this. My mother performed "experiments" on me in conjunction with her master's degree work in education; I was probably 8-10. It was clearly her call; I couldn't give fully informed consent, but there wasn't any risk of physical harm and vanishingly small risk of any possible harm, so I believe her consent by proxy was appropriate.

thesigil 13y ago

Hi, I am not a parent, but I think I have to put across this point of the way of looking at morality being independent of "free will", because "free will" is an illusion and the illusion of "free will" is also an illusion. The non-existence of free will should not be confused with fatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism. Morality and love and compassion can still be quantified without free will. What goes away are actually the negative feelings like hatred, anger and pride and shame. Let us take a simple thought experiment. Let me ask you to choose a book. Let us make it simple, let us remove all the books that you do not know about, and just consider the books that you are aware of being great. If you have already chosen one, drop it as it is wrong, don't ask me how, but I know, and this time be sensitive to the process of choosing a book. This is the most freest of choice that you ever will get to make, so free will better be here or else it is no where. Do you observe that there is a certain gap from the time I ask you to pick a book, and then there is certain gap and then suddenly there are a list of books in your mind. There is no way you can explain why you didn't think of The Godfather even though you know it is a great book. Let us say you thought about Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman and Seven years in Tibet. You have just finished one book in the series of Harry Potter and you are not interested in reading fiction again, so eliminate that, then you are only left with Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and Seven years in Tibet, say you like reading biographies so you chose Seven years in Tibet and Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, now when you have only these two options and there is no coherent opposition that is present in the system, only then comes the free aspect. There is still no way you can explain why you did not think otherwise, of choosing another book in the series of Harry Potter and reading more fiction. So where is the free will here? All of this still does not eradicate the feeling of love and compassion we feel and does not make everyone guilty by reason of insanity. All of this is much more well articulated by Sam Harris who holds a Ph.D in neurobiology and graduate in Philosophy. He talks about the delusion of free will at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk Here is another piece of his work where he promotes scientific thinking and argues that moral questions are best pursued using, not just philosophy, but methods of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape

13y ago

nevinera 13y ago

Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. 'Tricks' and 'techniques' abound, and every other article is about 'teaching' your child to achieve/empathize/compete. You know what works extra- extra- well? Be the kind of person you want your kids to be. Treat them like a decent person treats other decent people and that's the behavior they will learn. Your kids are way smarter than you think. They know what you're doing, they know you're trying to encourage certain behaviors, and they eventually know how to manipulate you much more effectively than you know how to manipulate them. Quit treating five-year-olds like they're some kind of resistant clay, and you have to cleverly shape them into the person they're going to be. That kid is already a person. Treating him like a puppy to be trained will certainly affect his personality and behavior, but the largest impact will not be the one you intended. You're teaching them how you want them to be, and you're also teaching them that the way to get what you want is to manipulate people into giving it to you.

kemayo 13y ago
Yes, that's a good trick to use. The article actually covers this, note. The entire last section is about how children watch adults and decide based on their actions how they should act, paying comparatively little attention to their words.
- nevinera 13y ago
  It's not a trick. Be a good person, and treat your children like people.
  - hamburglar 13y ago
    Sounds like a trick to me. What, I'm supposed to be a good person just for my kids' sake? Yeah, right, buddy! ;)
AJ007 13y ago
The best thing my parents did was be consistent. Early on I learned how to behave because I could predict my parent's reactions. How can a child learn to behave when all adult figures are erratic and irrational? Even the smallest things, like telling a kid Santa Claus is real can cause them to discount the value of truth. Reading behavioral psychology studies should require a skeptics hat. I'm not calling out these specific studies, but when it comes to miniscule sample sizes, unreproducible and sometimes out right made up results, this area is very suspect due to ease of fudging results. (Diederik Stapel comes to mind as an extreme case.)

Taek 13y ago

What stood out the most to me was the distinction between guilt and shame. When you belittle a child and insult their character, they're less likely to make amends and more likely to withdraw. I draw parallels to the way we treat criminals in our society. We cast them out and question their character and distance them from ourselves. This dumps a lot of shame on them, and might produce the same results as seen with the children; rather than feel guilt and make amends, they feel shame and withdraw.

Fasebook 13y ago

This is not an article I would go to NYTimes to read.

__david__ 13y ago
Why?
- pnut 13y ago
  because subliminal liberal mind control, duh!

mathattack 13y ago

There is some irony of an article about generosity coming from a Wharton professor. :-) I do like the outcome though - model the behaviors that you want your kids to follow.

TempleOSV2 13y ago

My sister said her boys could not have toy guns. "Mommy guess what this stick is?" One said. Liberals are proud of heart. They are buffoons. Imagine if the Pope wrote a new Bible for a thousand years.

jgalt212 13y ago

I would like to raise a moral child, and I aim to do so, but I'm sure they'll be less successful for it. In today's oligarchy it seems like the great majority of successful people today are either criminals or general pieces of shit. Now, of course, being a success is not the end all and be all, but seeing your skills greatly outdistance your results can be quite frustrating.

abarringer 13y ago
That only makes sense if by "being a success" means having more stuff then the next guy. I'd prefer to define success differently. If I had all the worlds goods/power and treated others like dirt I'd chalk myself up as a total loss.

jostylr 13y ago

Father of recent 3 year old. Big believer in modeling. I see other parents tell their kids to clean up, put stuff away, etc. I simply embrace cleaning up and my daughter follows suit quite often. We also do whatever we can to enable her to participate in what we are doing (sadly computers are a big problem in that regard, much more than say chopping with a knife). Our kid is very well-behaved and cautious (except for tired/hungry breakdowns, of course). I am also a big believer in the see-what happens school of action. Other parents are always encouraging (yelling at) their kids to share, particularly in support of aggressive children trying to take from their child. We believe in letting children experiment and realize that sharing leads to fun, greediness not so much. We demonstrate the power of choosing not to play others which is really the best way of handling unpleasant people/situations. But at the heart of it all is simply being, authentically, the kind of person you want your child to be. They are programmed to learn actual behavior from their parents who 1) have been successful enough to reproduce and 2) have a similar genetic makeup meaning their behaviors are likely to be compatible with the kid's abilities. So be a better person and relax. Oh, and look into Sudbury education for your kids which really teaches them how to be moral in a community.

jawns 13y ago
From Wikipedia: "At a Sudbury school, students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by direct democracy in which students and staff are equals. Students individually decide what to do with their time, and tend to learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized instruction. This is a form of democratic education." Hey, I'm open to using a child's own interests to help them learn ... but Sudbury takes a good thing way too far. You say that Sudbury teaches kids how to be moral in a community. Maybe ... if that community is "Lord of the Flies."
- jostylr 13y ago
  The wikipedia quote is correct. Your assessment seems to be not based on anything. Ask yourself, what is harder to learn: (1) knowing who you are and how to work with others or (2) solving an algebraic equation? They pretty much all learn how to read, write, do arithmetic. Those who want to go to college (about 80%) do so without difficulty, learning what they need in a few months. They are serious, engaged students in college because they know why they are there. They find college kids goofing off to be quite a mystery. They are free to become themselves when they are supposed to -- puberty. That's what that stage is for. Most schools prevent the self-exploration that is necessary to allow for that. So then it gets delayed until people's 20s. -- Visit such a school and you will see that they are much less nasty than those in a public school. Bullying is virtually unheard of. They work together as a community and take responsibility for it. They are collectively responsible for all the policing and judgement of others as well as themselves. They adjudicate quite fairly. I saw 8 year olds wrestling with determining an appropriate punishment for their friend vs. their own desire to help their friend. They really struggled to find a balance. 8 year olds. This is an issue that a lot of adults struggle with. They also write themselves up when they break a rule. They all buy into building a community. The school I visited was full of energy and respect. So you can either choose to believe the fiction of "Lord of the Flies" or believe the results of forty years of actual experience with the model.

MarkPNeyer 13y ago

i had to learn the opposite message here. our society tells us so much stuff about being kind and caring, and there are very few messages about being able to stick up for yourself, being able to make reasonable requests and being able to say no to people who are not treating you fairly. i had a roommate who didn't pay rent. i couldn't bring myself to confront the roommate because i felt like i "made of lot of money" and they didn't make much money and they had problems. i imagined them arguing with me and was scared and hurt by this image; i have no way to tell someone 'i deserve what i have and you don't' because i know i was born into a loving family that raised me and took care of me and pushed me to succeed. i can't take credit for those things. i finally had to tell myself "it's not just ok to put yourself first. you have to insist on it; if you don't get rent from your roommate, you're letting them take from the people you love took; when your roommate doesn't pay rent, they are ruining your mood which hurts your friends and family." it's hard. i finally said 'fuck being a good person, i'll do what i want and what benefits me and those i love.' this doesn't mean i go around being an ass to people all the time; i'm still generous when i tip and i try to look out for people. but now i'm different. if i sense someone is trying to abuse or push me around at all, i see them as a predator. when homeless people asking for money used to make me feel like a bad person for being successful, now i see them as predators who use negative emotions to try and take my positive feelings away. yes, they're suffering. but i can't help them, and giving them money doesn't help them either. show your kids how to be good, sure. but for god's sake teach them to say no to people who make unreasonable requests, and give them practice asking for things they are owed.

jeffdavis 13y ago
I think you are trying to separate things into "morally good" and "morally bad" that are really just morally neutral. If your roommate isn't paying you rent, kicking him out is a neutral course of action in most cases.
gohrt 13y ago
Don't go so far as to say "fuck being a good person", but understand that not everyone deserves unlimited trust and good faith. --which is I think what most of your comment is expressing. Your story is the topic of one of the most famous West End /Broadway songs of recent years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h1eBEmY6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h1eBEmY6U Even if you find that life's not fair, it Doesn't mean that you just have to grin and bear it If you always take it on the chin and wear it Nothing will change Even if you're little you can do a lot, you Mustn't let a little thing like little stop you If you sit around and let them get on top, you Might as well be saying you think that it's OK > homeless people asking for money ... i see them as predators who use negative emotions to try and take my positive feelings away. Or they are asking for money who using asking for money as a way to get money. Your "predator" description fits panhandlers with manipulative stories, but not all "homeless people asking for money". Also, it's worth considering , if someone is telling you a story that upsets you, but is a true story, maybe the negative feelins you feel are appropriate, and there is something wrong with economic inequality.

gregwebs 13y ago

Why limit these concepts to raising children? It seems like they should apply to adult interactions as well.

trackofalljades 13y ago

I find this article directly interesting, as a parent, but also sort of "meta" interesting as someone who's always been fascinated by the differences between shame-based societies and guilt-based ones. I'm not discounting the author's insights, but they are very clearly influenced by western thinking.

ldubs16 13y ago

I find this article very interesting because it suggests that the effects of moral attribution to the self vs. the event has the opposite results of achievement attributions. There are numerous studies that show when you praise a child for being smart instead of working hard, they become less curious and motivated. Perhaps this dichotomy is because of the commonly-accepted distinction between talent and work ethic, whereas being good and doing good are largely the same.

m0llusk 13y ago

Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman might be useful in looking at some of these issues. It goes into a lot of detail and refers to many studies, but in short there are ways of helping children to develop executive control which in turn enables them to both decide to do the right thing and follow through.

softatlas 13y ago

Act according to that maxim whereby you might will that it should become universal law. Active and passive forms are quantifiable, testable under contextual and relational analyses (highly frequent circumstantial virtuous, altruistic behavior versus less frequent) of Self and Other. Kant is providing à la Spinoza a chart for the geometry of ethical behavior, so we can treat ethical behavior in terms of non-locality to specific norms — whereas Spinoza does this in terms of a calculus of the emotions w/r/t Self, or the Ethical Self. By Bernard Williams's standard, the amoralist cannot even conceivably have an intermittent feeling of sympathy[0]. The person is at minimum embedded within and embodied by sympathetic behavior (to self or to other), but this is not a necessary condition to morality. At the same time, the kinds of experiments we run, and the types of questions we ask, potentially distill or deauthenticate the model with the widest representation of moral truth — however the narrative of science may belie institutional refactors at meta-ethical descriptions. – [0]: http://bobnoxiousthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/08/challenging-bernard-williams-amoralist.html http://bobnoxiousthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/08/challenging-b...

Im_Talking 13y ago

Haven't read the article as it's probably full of psycho-babble. Just live your life with integrity and the kids will follow. And don't force-feed religion on the poor kids, morals are not from fairy-tales; morals are real. My kids see the value of being moral via me and then these morals are confirmed as they wander thru life.

jboynyc 13y ago

Just for the record, J. Philippe Rushton, whom the op-ed draws on as a classic source of this kind of work in psychology, was a white-supremacist race "scientist" who argued, among other things, that black people have narrower hips because they have smaller brains. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a file on him: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/jean-philippe-rushton http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/pro... While that doesn't invalidate all the findings outlined in the op-ed, it's not exactly confidence inspiring either, as this essay persuasively argues: http://africasacountry.com/the-racesciencefiles-the-new-york-times-edition/ http://africasacountry.com/the-racesciencefiles-the-new-york...