Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [249]
There seems to be good evidence, then, for both the maturational and the cognitive-developmental views; the truth, one suspects, is probably an amalgam of the two.
An influence on personality development that has long been a leading subject of research is parenting style. Researchers have explored it by means of an array of techniques—observation, questionnaires, experiments, correlation analysis—and their findings, which have been quickly picked up by the media, are familiar to most literate people. Here, in brief, ignoring passing fads in parenting, is a handful of enduring findings gathered in recent decades. Bear in mind, however, that both genetic tendencies and external factors exert significant influences on personality development; the connections listed here between parent behavior and child personality are only correlations, and not always strong ones.
Discipline: Power assertion (threats and punishment) and withdrawal of love are forms of external control; they may produce compliance, chiefly while the parents are watching or can carry out sanctions. But discipline by induction (explaining why a certain act is wrong, how it violates a principle, how it makes the other person feel) leads the child to absorb the parents’ values and make them part of his or her own standards; it creates self-control.77
Child-rearing style: The children of authoritarian (dictatorial) parents tend to be withdrawn, low in vitality, mediocre in social skills, and often prejudiced, and, for boys, low in cognitive skills. The children of permissive parents have more vitality and sunnier moods but poor social and cognitive skills (the latter is true of boys in particular). The children of authoritative (firmly governing but democratic) parents tend to be self-assertive, independent, friendly, and high in both social and cognitive skills.78
Modeling: Parents are models for their children’s behavior and traits of personality. An aggressive parent tends to produce an aggressive child, a gentle parent a gentle child. When parents preach particular values but themselves behave differently, children will imitate the behavior rather than follow the preachments. Children are especially likely to model themselves on a nurturing or strong parent, less so a cold or weak one.79
Parent-child interaction: Children whose parents talk to them a lot develop higher verbal and social skills than those whose parents talk to them little. Children whose parents play with them a lot tend to be popular with other children and good at recognizing and interpreting other children’s moods and emotional expressions. The way the parent and child interact is likely to be the model for the child’s other relationships.80
Sex-role behavior: While many of the behavioral differences between boys and girls have some basis in biology, much sex-typed behavior is learned from the parents. It begins at birth, when parents unconsciously respond differently to boy infants and girl infants. It continues in direct instruction about how to behave and, even more important, in the child’s identification with the same-sex parent and imitation of that role model. Macho men tend to have macho sons, seductive women seductive daughters, and so on. The child tends to imitate even non-sex-role traits of the same-sex parent more than those of the other-sex parent.81
We could look at dozens of findings about parenting and personality development, but we have tarried long enough. It is time to see what develops when the child goes outside the home.
Social Development
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.” The formicine activity that Solomon (or whoever wrote Proverbs 6) would like us to emulate concerns gathering and putting by food in good times. But the social cooperation of ants is far more remarkable. From the moment they emerge from the larval stage, they are perfectly socialized, their minuscule nervous systems programmed to respond automatically to the chemical signals and touches of their fellows with appropriate