By ADAM GRANT
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 children’s accomplishments, success
is not the No. 1 priority for most parents. We’re 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, I’ve been studying
the surprising success of people who frequently help others without any strings
attached. As the father of two daughters and a son, I’ve become increasingly
curious about how these generous tendencies develop.
Genetic twin
studies suggest that anywhere from
a quarter to
more than
halfof
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 it’s 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, “You’re 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 you’re
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 don’t cheat,” participants were told, “Please don’t 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.
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
didn’t 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 explain what happened. The ashamed
toddlers were avoiders; the guilty toddlers were amenders.
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 asense 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: “You’re 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 adult’s influence was significant: Actions spoke louder
than words. When the adult behaved selfishly, children followed suit. The words
didn’t make much difference — children gave fewer tokens after observing the
adult’s 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 don’t 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 “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.”
Source : The New York Times
