Invitation to Psychology

94 ChapTer 3 Development Over the Life Span

permitted our forebears to resolve conflicts and

get along (Delton et al., 2011; Krebs, 2008).

Can the moral sense and the desire to behave

well with others be nurtured or extinguished by

specific methods of child rearing? For decades,

most developmental psychologists assumed that

the answer was “Of course!” and they set about try-

ing to pinpoint which parental techniques create

well-behaved, kind,

unselfish children.

Then came a flood

of behavioral- genetic

studies that led to a

different assumption:

The effects of the

parents’ methods de-

pend (of course!) on the kind of child they have—

one who heeds discipline or one who is resistant

and hostile?

Many researchers are now seeking a middle

ground by studying gene-environment interac-

tions (Schmidt et al., 2009). One provocative hy-

pothesis suggests that infants and toddlers who

show high levels of distress and irritability are ac-

tually more responsive to, and influenced by, styles

of parenting than easygoing babies are. Easygoing

babies are “dandelions”; they survive in almost

any circumstances they encounter because they

are, well, easygoing. “Orchid children,” in con-

trast, are highly sensitive to their environments;

under adversity, they wither (Ellis & Boyce, 2008).

When such babies have impatient, rejecting, or

coercive parents, they later tend to become ag-

gressive and even more difficult and defiant. When

they have patient, supportive, firm parents, they

become better natured and happier—in a word,

they bloom (Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, &

van IJzendoorn, 2007; Belsky & Pluess, 2009b).

Keeping the complexity of this issue in mind,

let’s look at how parental discipline methods in-

teract with a child’s temperament in the develop-

ment of conscience and moral behavior.

Getting Children to be Good. When you did

something wrong as a child, did the adults in your

family spank you, shout at you, threaten you, or

explain the error of your ways? One of the most

common methods that parents use to enforce moral

standards and good behavior is power assertion,

which includes threats, physical punishment, de-

priving the child of privileges, and generally taking

advantage of being bigger, stronger, and more pow-

erful. Of course, a parent may have no alternative

other than “Do it because I say so!” if the child is

too young to understand a rule or impishly keeps

trying to break it. Moreover, the culture and context

in which the discipline occurs makes an enormous

scoundrels.” Today, therefore, developmental psy-

chologists place greater emphasis on how children

learn to regulate their own emotions and behavior

(Mischel & Ayduk, 2004). Most children learn to

inhibit their wishes to beat up their younger sib-

lings, steal a classmate’s toy, or scream at the top of

their lungs if they don’t get their way. The child’s

emerging ability to understand right from wrong,

and to behave accordingly, depends on the emer-

gence of conscience and moral emotions such as

shame, guilt, and empathy (Kochanska et al., 2005).

As we saw in our discussion of Piaget, even

very young children are capable of feeling empa-

thy for others and taking another person’s point

of view. One-year-olds will point to an object to

help an adult find it; by 18 months they show con-

cern for someone who is hurt; early in life, they

begin sharing and helping others. Children do

these things and obey rules not only because they

are afraid of what will happen to them if they do

not, but also because they understand right from

wrong—they do kind things even if they don’t

“get credit” for it (Hepach, Vaish, & Tomasello,

2012). By age 5, they know it is wrong to hurt

someone even if a teacher tells them to (Turiel,

2002). The capacity for understanding right from

wrong seems to be inborn. Evolutionary psy-

chologists argue that this “moral sense” underlies

the basic beliefs, judgments, and behavior that are

considered moral almost everywhere, and that it

originated in cooperative, altruistic strategies that

How do children internalize moral rules? How do they

learn that cheating, stealing, and grabbing a younger

sibling’s toy are wrong?

About Teaching Children

Morality

Thinking

CriTiCally

power assertion A
method of child rearing
in which the parent uses
punishment and authority
to correct the child’s
misbehavior.