You've probably heard people refer to their child as “my little angel.” But clearly, children quite often behave far from angelically! Like so much of our behavior, being good has to be learned. How do children learn to tell right from wrong, resist the temptation to behave selfishly, and obey the rules of social conduct? In this section, we'll discuss issues of moral development.

In the 1960s, Lawrence Kohlberg (1964), inspired by Piaget's work, argued that children's ability to understand right from wrong, and other forms of moral reasoning, evolved along with the rest of their cognitive abilities, progressing through three levels. Very young children obey rules because they fear being punished if they disobey, and later because they think it is in their best interest to obey. At about age 10, their moral judgments shift to ones based on conformity and loyalty to others, and then to an understanding of the rule of law. In adulthood, a few individuals go on to develop a moral standard based on universal human rights. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought against laws supporting segregation, Mohandas Gandhi advocated nonviolent solutions to injustice in India, and Susan B. Anthony fought for women's right to vote, all because those were right and just principles to endorse.

Kohlberg was right that moral reasoning skills increase during the school years, but unfortunately so do cheating, lying, cruelty, and the cognitive ability to rationalize these actions. Accordingly, developmental psychologists today place greater emphasis on how children learn to regulate their own emotions and behavior (Mischel, 2013). Most children learn to inhibit their wishes to beat up their younger siblings, 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 emergence of conscience and moral emotions such as shame, guilt, and empathy (Kochanska et al., 2005; Ongley & Malti, 2014).

As we saw in discussing criticisms of Piaget's theory, even very young children are capable of feeling empathy for others and taking another person's point of view. Children obey rules not only because they are afraid of what will happen to them if they disobey, but also because they understand right from wrong. By age 5, they know it is wrong to hurt someone even if a teacher tells them to (Turiel, 2014). The capacity for understanding right from wrong seems to be inborn. Evolutionary psychologists 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 permitted our forebears to resolve conflicts and get along (Delton et al., 2011; Krebs, 2008).

Can a moral sense and a desire to behave well with others be nurtured or extinguished by specific methods of childrearing? For decades, most developmental psychologists assumed that the answer was “Of course!” and they set about trying to pinpoint which parental techniques create well-behaved, kind, unselfish children. Then came a flood of behavioral-genetic studies that led to a very different assumption: The effects of the parents' methods depend (of course!) on the kind of child they have. Is it one who heeds discipline or one who is resistant and hostile?

Today, many researchers are seeking a middle ground by studying gene–environment interactions (Schmidt et al., 2009). Aggressive, antisocial adolescents often have a history of maltreatment and abuse in childhood and a gene variant linked to aggressive behavior. Good parenting, however, can help to override a genetic vulnerability. One provocative hypothesis suggests that infants and toddlers who show high levels of distress and irritability are actually 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 contrast, are highly sensitive to their environments; under adversity, they wither (Kennedy, 2013). When such babies have impatient, rejecting, or coercive parents, they later tend to become aggressive 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 interact with a child's temperament in the development of conscience and moral behavior.

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? To try to enforce moral standards and good behavior, many parents rely on power assertion, which includes threats, physical punishment, depriving the child of privileges, and generally taking advantage of being bigger, stronger, and more powerful. 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 difference. Is the parent–child relationship fundamentally loving and trusting or one full of hostility and fighting? Does the child interpret the parents' actions as being fair and caring, or unfair and cruel?

But when power assertion consists of sheer parental bullying, cruel insults (“You are so stupid, I wish you'd never been born”), and frequent physical punishment, it is associated with greater aggressiveness and reduced empathy in children (Alink et al., 2009; Kochanska et al., 2015; Moore & Pepler, 2006). Physical punishment often backfires, especially when it is used inappropriately or harshly; it spirals out of control, causing the child to become angry and resentful. Moreover, harsh but ineffective discipline methods are often transmitted to the next generation: Aggressive parents teach their children that the way to discipline children is by behaving aggressively (Capaldi et al., 2003).

What is the alternative? In contrast to power assertion, a parent can use induction, appealing to the child's own abilities, empathy, helpful nature, affection for others, and sense of responsibility (“You made Doug cry; it's not nice to bite”; “You must never poke anyone's eyes because that could really hurt them”). Or the parent might appeal to the child's own helpful inclinations (“I know you're a person who likes to be nice to others”) rather than citing external reasons to be good (“You'd better be nice or you won't get dessert”).

Self-Control and Conscience One of the most important social-emotional skills that children need to acquire is the ability to control their immediate impulses and wishes. In particular, they need to learn to delay gratification to gain later benefits. The original classic study of delayed gratification used a “marshmallow test”: Preschoolers were offered a choice between eating one marshmallow right away or having two marshmallows if they could wait a few minutes while the experimenter stepped out of the room (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). Dozens of studies have been done since, including follow-ups on what became of the children in the first experiments, and the results are clear: Children who are able to resist the single marshmallow (or other prize) in favor of getting a larger reward later are better able to control negative emotions, pay attention to the task at hand, and do well in school. Indeed, the early ability to postpone gratification has effects on health, success, and well-being that last for decades (Casey et al., 2011; Eigsti et al., 2006; Mischel, 2014; Ponitz et al., 2009).

Where does this skill come from? Partly from temperament and personality because children who can control their emotions and impulses usually do so across situations (de Ridder et al., 2012; Raffaelli, Crockett, & Shen, 2005). Partly from learning: Children and young people can learn to improve their ability to delay gratification by focusing on the later benefits, by distracting themselves from focusing on the appealing prize, and by mentally “cooling” the hot, appealing features of the prize (e.g., by imagining the marshmallow as a cloud or a little cotton ball, rather than as a sweet treat). And partly from the way their parents treat them.

A longitudinal study of 106 preschool children explored the links between parental discipline, the child's self-control, and the emergence of conscience (Kochanska & Knaack, 2003). The children who were most able to regulate their impulses early in life were the least likely to get in trouble later by fighting or destroying things, and the most likely to have a high conscience score. In turn, their behavior was negatively correlated with the mother's use of power assertion, meaning that mothers who ordered their children to “behave” tended to have children who were impulsive and aggressive. However, cause and effect worked in both directions. Some mothers relied on power assertion because their children were impulsive, defiant, and aggressive and would not listen to them. This pattern of findings teaches us to avoid oversimplifying, by concluding that “It's all in what the mother does” or that “It's all in the child's personality.” Mothers and children, it seems, raise each other.

Getting Children to Be Good

Journal: Thinking Critically-Avoid Emotional Reasoning

Would you rather have $10 now or $20 in 2 weeks? If you want easy money, you can get a lesser amount right away, but if you’re willing to delay gratification, you can get more in a little while. Regardless of the option you’d pick, explain your reasoning. What are your thoughts and motives driving the choice you’d make? Would it matter if the circumstances were changed; how about $100 right now or $200 in 2 weeks?

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