Adam Grant (NYT) discusses how parents can successfully impart moral values to their children:
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.
Razib Khan thinks these studies overlook the question of social environment:
To illustrate what I am getting at, imagine two children who are given up for adoption, and whose biological parents are alcoholics. Imagine that you know the biological parents are both carrying genes which are strongly correlated with alcoholism. Both these hypothetical children are adopted into conservative white upper middle class families, one in Orange county California, and another in an affluent suburb of Salt Lake City. Both families are socially conservative, and do not tolerate drinking among their children. My prediction is that the child adopted into a Mormon culture which is far less tolerant of individual choice on the issue of alcohol consumption will have lower risks of being an alcoholic simply because the whole landscape of decisions is going to be altered throughout their whole life. An adopted child with a family history of alcoholism is stilling going to have a higher risk within their population, but the nature of the population is likely to shift the baseline odds.
Katy Waldman focuses on another aspect of Grant’s argument, that children respond better to praise of their character than praise of their choices, but that the opposite holds true for criticism:
In a way, criticism that invokes a kid’s inner nature boomerangs for the same reason that praising her intelligence can: A parent’s estimation of character becomes a prison sentence. For children constantly told they are smart, the pressure of living up to that epithet looms large. Depending on how confident the kid is, the weight of the prophecy sometimes outweighs the thrill of getting complimented. Meanwhile, for children led to believe they harbor secret moral flaws, it’s easier to retreat or throw a tantrum than to fight the “truth.”
The Dish 