Psych essay overview 9

MutuallyresponsiveorientationbetweenmothersandtheiryoungchildrenAcontextfortheearlydevelopmentofconscience.pdf

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CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 191

These basic questions are central to any evolutionary approach. Psy- chologists who do not like the sim- plicity of the answers currently coming out of evolutionary psy- chology should make an effort to improve them, to broaden its intel- lectual horizon, because all of psy- chology would stand to gain from a more enlightened evolutionary psychology.

Recommended Reading

de Waal, F.B.M. (1999). The end of

nature versus nurture.

Scientific American

281

, 94–99. de Waal, F.B.M. (2001).

The ape and the sushi master: Cultural reflections by a primatologist

. New York: Basic Books.

Mayr, E. (2001).

What evolution is

. New York: Basic Books.

Zimmer, C. (2001).

Evolution: The tri- umph of an idea

. New York: Harper Collins.

Acknowledgments—

I thank Allison Berger and Virginia Holt for providing

the transcript of my 2001 Focus on Sci- ence Plenary Address, which was pre- s e n t e d a t t h e a n n u a l m e e t i n g o f t h e American Psychological Association in San Francisco and was on the topic of this essay. I am also grateful to Mauricio Pap- ini and Scott Lilienfeld for comments on previous versions of the manuscript.

Notes

1. Address correspondence to Frans B.M. de Waal, Living Links, Yerkes Pri- mate Research Center, Emory Univer- sity, 954 N. Gatewood Rd., Atlanta, GA 30322.

2. Theory of mind means that one understands the mental states of others (a capacity that may be limited to hu- mans and apes).

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Good natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals

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Chimpanzee politics

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New York Times Book Review

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An introduction to social psy- chology

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. New York: Knopf.

Mutually Responsive Orientation Between Mothers and Their Young Children: A Context for the Early Development of Conscience

Grazyna Kochanska

Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

Abstract

Some parent-child dyads es- tablish a mutually responsive orientation (MRO), a relation- ship that is close, mutually binding, cooperative, and af-

fectively positive. Such rela- t i o n s h i p s h a v e t w o m a i n characteristics—mutual re- sponsiveness and shared posi- tive affect—and they foster the

development of conscience in young children. Children grow- ing up with parents who are re- sponsive to their needs and whose interactions are infused with happy emotions adopt a willing, responsive stance to- ward parental influence and be- come eager to embrace parental values and standards for behav- ior. The concurrent and longitu-

dinal beneficial effects of MRO for early development of con- science have been replicated across studies, for a broad range of developmental periods from infancy through early school age, and using a wide variety of behavioral, emotional, and cog- nitive measures of conscience in the laboratory, at home, and in school. These findings highlight the importance of the early par- ent-child relationship for subse- quent moral development.

Keywords

relationships; mutuality; con- science

How do young children become aware of rules, values, and standards of behavior accepted within their

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families and cultures? How do they gradually come to internalize those values and make them their own? Why do some children adopt soci- etal norms wholeheartedly and with ease, and become conscientious citi- zens, whereas others do not?

The emergence of an individual conscience, a reliable internal guid- ance system that regulates conduct without the need for external con- trol, is the endpoint of the process of integrating a child into a broader network of values. How this pro- cess works continues to be debated as one of the perennial and central i s s u e s i n h u m a n s o c i a l i z a t i o n (Grusec, 1997).

Research on conscience was once dominated by a cognitive approach, focused on children’s abstract under- standing of societal rules, measured by their ability to reason about hypo- thetical moral dilemmas. Moral de- velopment was seen as a product of cognitive maturation, aided by peer interactions, but fundamentally un- related to parental influence. In con- trast, other theories acknowledged parental contributions. Parents and other socializing agents were seen as critical in several versions of learning theory. Those approaches empha- sized the importance of parental dis- cipline and modeling as instruments that modify and shape children’s be- havior. Somewhat later, attributional theories underscored the importance of children’s perceptions of parental discipline, and revealed surprising, often paradoxical effects of salient parental rewards and punishments.

More recently, many scholars have come to appreciate an ap- proach grounded in psychoana- lytic and neo-psychoanalytic theo- ries. Although Freud’s views on t h e e a r l y d e v e l o p m e n t o f c o n - science as linked to the Oedipus or Electra complex have long been discarded, his general emphasis on the role of early emotions and early relationships in emerging morality has proven insightful. That ap- proach has been strongly reinvigo-

rated and modernized by John Bowlby and the burgeoning re- search on attachment. From that perspective, moral emotions, moral conduct, and moral thought are all components of an internal guid- ance system, or conscience, whose f o u n d a t i o n s a r e e s t a b l i s h e d i n early childhood in the context of socialization in the family. The early parent-child relationship, which encompasses but is not lim- ited to control and discipline, can substantially foster or undermine that process (Emde, Biringen, Cly- man, & Oppenheim, 1991).

THE RELATIONSHIP PERSPECTIVE: MUTUALLY

RESPONSIVE ORIENTATION

In 1951, Robert Sears argued for a shift in psychological research f r o m s t u d y i n g i n d i v i d u a l s t o studying dyads. Over the past two or three decades, the science of re- lationships has blossomed in per- sonality, social, and developmental psychology (Collins & Laursen, 1999; Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000). Sev- eral scholars have proposed that

when relationship partners—whether two adults or a parent and a child— are responsive and attuned to each other, are mutually supportive, and enjoy being together, they form an internal model of their re- lationship as a cooperative enter- prise, and develop an eager, recep- tive stance toward each other’s influence and a compelling sense of obligation to willingly comply with the other. For example, Clark (1984) referred to “communal rela- tionships” in adults as contexts in which the partners are invested in each other’s well-being, are em- p a t h i c a n d r e s p o n s i v e t o e a c h other, and experience an internal sense of mutual obligation.

In developmental research, those resurging perspectives afford a pro- ductive vantage point for exploring

social development. Socialization is seen as a process jointly constructed by parents and children over time (Collins & Laursen, 1999; Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000; Maccoby, 1999; Reis et al., 2000). Maccoby (1999) referred to parent-child mutuality as a positive socialization force that engenders a spirit of cooperation in the child. Attachment scholars be- lieve that children raised in a loving, responsive manner become eager to cooperate with their caregivers and to embrace their values.

To describe such relationships between parents and children, my colleagues and I have proposed a construct of

mutually responsive ori- entation

(

MRO

). MRO is a positive, close, mutually binding, and coop- erative relationship, which encom- passes two components:

responsive- n e s s

a n d

s h a r e d p o s i t i v e a f f e c t

. Responsiveness refers to the par- ent’s and the child’s willing, sensi- tive, supportive, and developmen- tally appropriate response to one another’s signals of distress, un- happiness, needs, bids for atten- tion, or attempts to exert influence. Shared positive affect refers to the “good times” shared by the parent and the child—pleasurable, harmo- nious, smoothly flowing interac- tions infused with positive emo- tions experienced by both.

We further proposed that chil- dren who grow up in mutually re- sponsive dyads, compared with those who do not, become more ea- ger to embrace their parents’ val- ues and more likely to develop a s t r o n g c o n s c i e n c e . T h e i r e a g e r stance to embrace parental values reflects an internal sense of obliga- tion to respond positively to paren- tal influence, and emerges from a history of mutually gratifying, mu- tually accommodating experiences. A child who has developed a mu- tually responsive relationship with the parent comes to trust the par- ent and to expect that the parent will be responsive and supportive;

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 193

at the same time, the child comes to feel motivated to cooperate will- ingly with the parent, to embrace the parent’s values, and to adopt parental standards for behavior and make them his or her own. In this view, the parent-child relation- ship influences the child’s con- science mainly through a gradually evolving shared working model of the relationship as a mutually co- operative enterprise rather than through the cumulative history of parental discipline as the instru- ment of behavior modification.

MOTHER-CHILD MRO AND CHILDREN’S CONSCIENCE:

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

In two large studies, we mea- sured the qualities of the mother- child relationship and the child’s emerging conscience for more than 200 mother-child dyads. To assess the strength of MRO for the indi- vidual dyads, we observed the mothers and children interacting in multiple lengthy, naturalistic yet carefully scripted contexts at home and in the laboratory. The situa- tions we observed included care- giving routines, preparing and eat- ing meals, playing, relaxing, and doing household chores. We coded each mother’s responsiveness to her child’s numerous signals of needs, signs of physical or emotional dis- tress or discomfort, bids for atten- tion, and social overtures. We also assessed shared positive affect by coding the flow of emotion expres- sion for both the mother and the child over the course of each inter- action, focusing particularly on the times when they both displayed positive emotion. We obtained these measures repeatedly, follow- ing the same families over a period of several years.

In the individual dyads, the de- gree of MRO was significantly con-

sistent across separate sessions close in time, and significantly sta- ble over several years. This indi- cates that our observational mark- ers captured a robust quality of the relationships that unfolded along a fairly stable dyadic trajectory.

Using a broad variety of labora- tory paradigms, we also observed rich manifestations of the young children’s conscience: moral emo- tions, moral conduct, and moral cognition. These assessments took place at many points in the chil- dren’s development—starting in their 2nd year and continuing until early school age. The children’s moral emotions, including guilt, discom- fort, concern, and empathy, were observed when they were led to believe that they had violated a standard of conduct, or when they witnessed others’ distress. While they were unsupervised, either alone or with peers, their moral c o n d u c t w a s a s s e s s e d i n m a n y types of situations in which they faced strong temptations to break various rules and were coaxed to v i o l a t e s t a n d a r d s o f b e h a v i o r . Their moral cognition was mea- sured by presenting them with a g e - a p p r o p r i a t e , h y p o t h e t i c a l moral dilemmas and asking them to express their thoughts and feel- ings about rules and transgres- sions, and consider moral deci- sions. We also asked their mothers and teachers to evaluate the chil- dren’s moral emotions and con- duct displayed in environments outside the laboratory—at home and at school.

Both studies supported the view that children who grow up in a context of a highly mutually re- sponsive relationship with their mothers develop strong consciences (Kochanska, 1997; Kochanska, For- man, & Coy, 1999; Kochanska & Murray, 2000). The strength of the replicated findings was striking, given the broad range of the chil- dren’s ages and the wide variety of conscience measures used.

In both studies, the links be- tween MRO and the development of conscience were both concurrent and longitudinal. The concurrent links were found for both toddlers and preschoolers. The longitudinal findings were robust: MRO in in- fancy predicted conscience devel- opment in the 2nd year, and MRO i n t o d d l e r h o o d p r e d i c t e d c h i l - dren’s conscience at preschool age and again at early school age. The history of MRO in the first 2 years predicted conscience at age 5. In short, the beneficial effect of MRO on the development of conscience was evident across diverse measures of conscience involving emotions, conduct, and cognition. It was also evident whether conscience was assessed by observations in the lab- oratory or reports from mothers and teachers. These results have been replicated by other research- ers (Laible & Thompson, 2000).

HOW DOES MRO EXERT ITS IMPACT?

What causal mechanisms may be responsible for these well-estab- lished empirical findings? Using sta- tistical approaches (sequences of multiple regressions, as well as structural equations modeling, or SEM) to analyze the causal factors that accounted for the associations in our data, we determined that MRO exerts its influence through at least two mechanisms.

The first mechanism involves p r o m o t i n g t h e c h i l d ’ s p o s i t i v e mood. Early MRO between the parent and the child contributes to the child’s positive, happy disposi- tion, and that, in turn, increases his or her broad eagerness to behave prosocially. This finding is consis- tent with a large body of research in social and developmental psy- chology (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). Adults and children who are in a positive mood have often been

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found to be more prosocial, altruis- tic, cooperative, rule abiding, and socially responsive than those who are in neutral or negative moods.

T h e s e c o n d m e c h a n i s m i n - volves promoting the child’s re- sponsive stance toward parental influence. We have found that in playlike teaching situations, chil- dren in mutually responsive rela- t i o n s h i p s a r e a t t u n e d t o t h e i r mothers and eagerly follow their lead (Forman & Kochanska, 2001; Kochanska et al., 1999). In disci- pline situations, they show what we called

committed compliance

—will- ing, eager, wholehearted coopera- tion with the parent (Kochanska, Coy, & Murray, 2001). Such a gen- eralized responsive stance may be an intermediate step between sim- ple cooperation with the parent and genuine internalization of pa- rental rules, evident even in the parent’s absence. We believe it re- flects the child’s emerging working model of a cooperative, reciprocal, mutually accommodating relation- ship in which partners naturally do things for one another without ab- rogating their autonomy.

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

MRO and Qualities of Individuals

It takes two to develop dyadic MRO. Although the relationship be- tween a parent and child—like any relationship—is more than a sim- ple sum of their characteristics, those characteristics may neverthe- less foster or impede the formation of MRO. Recent advances in re- search on the role of genetics in be- havior and on the biological foun- dations of children’s temperament are beginning to be reflected in sci- entific work in what has been tradi- tionally conceived as the domain of relationships. For example, Deater-

Deckard and O’Connor (2000), studying identical and fraternal twins, and biological and adoptive siblings, found that parent-child MRO was driven, in part, by the child’s genetically based qualities. In addition, a child’s biologically based traits, such as being prone to anger or joy, or being hard or easy to soothe, may facilitate or under- mine the evolution of the child’s re- lationships within particular dyads. Being responsive to and having en- joyable interactions with a child may be more challenging if the child is temperamentally difficult than if he or she is easygoing and mellow.

Mothers’ traits, some also bio- logically based, may be important as well. We have found that the more empathic mothers are, the better able they are to form MRO with their children (Kochanska, 1997). A large body of research in- dicates that depression and high levels of negative emotion in moth- ers reduce their responsiveness and positive behavior when inter- acting with their young children.

M o r e c o m p l e x i n t e r p l a y b e - tween biological and relationship factors also deserves future re- search attention. Our findings indi- cate that MRO may be particularly beneficial for children with certain temperaments, particularly fear- less, thrill-seeking children whose behavior is not easily modified by actual or anticipated punishments and threats. Other interactions be- tween temperament and relation- ships are also possible.

MRO as a Developmentally Changing System

A mutually responsive relation- ship between a parent and an in- fant differs from a mutually re- sponsive relationship between a parent and a preschooler, or be- tween a parent and an adolescent. The contexts and currency of par-

ent-child interactions change. In in- fancy, those contexts include mostly the contexts of caregiving, play, and daily routines, and the currency of exchange is often nonverbal. Grad- ually, the contexts expand to in- clude parent-child discussions of events and ideas, and the exchanges are increasingly verbal (Laible & Thompson, 2000). The child’s and the parent’s relative contributions to the relationship change over time, and so do their cognitive represen- tations, perceptions, and expecta- tions of the relationship and of each other. Psychologists’ understanding of the child’s side of MRO lags con- siderably behind their understand- ing of the parent’s side of MRO. How MRO can be assessed in a manner that is developmentally sensitive and yet captures stable qualities of the parent-child dyad over time is one of the future challenges.

MRO and Internal Representations

In research to date, MRO has been inferred from parents’ and chil- dren’s observed behavior and af- fect during interactions. This outer layer, however, only partially cap- tures the essence of a relationship. Scholars studying relationships have adopted Bowlby’s premise that, over time, the parent and the child gradually form inner repre- sentations, or internal working models, of their relationship (Col- lins & Laursen, 1999). Those evolv- ing models include generalized memories of each other’s behavior, implicit beliefs and feelings about each other and the relationship, and a sense of what the relation- ship is like and what to expect from one another. Those general- ized products of an individual’s ex- perience serve to organize and bias his or her future information pro- cessing, behavior, and emotions. In the case of MRO, the parent’s and

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 195

child’s internal models entail mu- tual cooperation and implicit reci- procity, and the child’s internal model is thought to underlie his or her willingness to embrace paren- tal rules. Those inner representa- tions, however, are difficult to access and to study. To develop sensitive yet rigorous methodologies that will provide insights into the rep- resentational aspect of MRO is an important future challenge.

MRO and the Family System

The relationship between a par- ent and child is itself nested in a network of family relationships. The importance of studying devel- opment in the context of the entire family system has been increas- ingly acknowledged. In particular, f u t u r e r e s e a r c h s h o u l d s t u d y m o t h e r - c h i l d a n d f a t h e r - c h i l d MRO, both separately and as a tri- adic interconnected system. More generally, family-level variables such as stress, conflict, support, and affective ambience may be sig- nificant dimensions of the context in which mutually responsive rela- tionships with the child may flour- ish or fail.