The Early Development of Conscience

We all are familiar with the notion of a conscience—that voice inside us that pushes us to behave in moral ways and makes us feel guilty if we do not. Stated more formally, conscience is an internal regulatory mechanism that increases the individual’s ability to conform to standards of conduct accepted in his or her culture. Consistent with Freud’s theory (see Chapter 9), it is likely that the conscience of a young child reflects primarily internalized parental standards (although probably the standards of both parents, not just of the same-gender parent, as Freud suggested). The conscience restrains antisocial behavior or destructive impulses and promotes a child’s compliance with adults’ rules and standards, even when no one is monitoring the child’s behavior (Kochanska, 2002). The conscience can also promote prosocial behavior by causing the child to feel guilty when engaging in uncaring behavior or failing to live up to internalized values about helping others (N. Eisenberg, 2000; M. L. Hoffman, 1982).

Factors Affecting the Development of Conscience

Young children often have not yet internalized some of their parents’ prohibitions and values. The degree to which they do so appears to depend in part on the quality of the parenting they receive and, in part, on their temperament.

BLEND IMAGES/ALAMY

Contrary to Freud’s idea that the conscience emerges as an outcome of identification with the same-gender parent at about age 4 to 6, children actually develop a conscience slowly over time. By age 2, toddlers start to show an appreciation for moral standards and rules and begin to exhibit signs of guilt when they do something wrong (Kopp, 2001; R. A. Thompson & Newton, 2010; Zahn-Waxler & Robinson, 1995). These two components of conscience—the desire to comply with rules and feelings of guilt when failing to do so—are quite stable in their early development from 22 to 45 months of age (Aksan & Kochanska, 2005; Kochanska et al., 2002). Children’s growing understanding of others’ emotions and goals, and their increasing capacity for empathic concern, are likely contributors to the development of conscience (R. A. Thompson, 2012).

As they mature, children are more likely to take on their parents’ moral values, and to exhibit guilt for violating those values, if their parents use disciplinary practices that deemphasize parental power and include rational explanations that help children understand and learn the parents’ values (Kochanska & Aksan, 2006; Laible et al., 2008; Volling et al., 2009). Children’s adoption of their parents’ values is also facilitated by a secure, positive parent–child relationship, which inclines children to be open to, and eager to internalize, their parents’ communication of their values (Bretherton et al., 1997; Kochanska et al., 2005; Kochanska et al., 2008).

Children may develop a conscience in different ways according to their temperament. Toddlers who are prone to fear (e.g., who are fearful of unfamiliar people or situations) tend to exhibit more guilt at a young age than do less fearful children (Kochanska et al., 2002). Moreover, for those infants who are prone to fear, the development of conscience seems to be promoted by the mother’s use of gentle discipline that includes reasoning with the child and providing nonmaterial incentives for compliance (Kochanska & Aksan, 2006). When mothers use gentle discipline, fearful children do not become so apprehensive and anxious that they tune out their mother’s messages about desired behavior. Gentle discipline arouses fearful children just enough that they attend to and remember what their mother tells them (Kochanska, 1993).

In contrast, gentle discipline seems to be unrelated to the development of conscience in fearless young children, perhaps because it is insufficient to arouse their attention (Kochanska, 1997a). What does seem to foster the development of conscience in fearless children is a parent–child relationship characterized by secure attachment and mutual cooperation (Kochanska, 1995; Kochanska & Aksan, 2006). Fearless children appear motivated more by the desire to please their mother than by a fear of her (Kochanska, 1997b). Unfortunately, research on this topic seldom has been conducted with fathers, so it is not known whether the findings for the effects of mothers’ discipline also generalize to fathers’ discipline.

The effects of parenting on children’s conscience also vary with their genes, which, as discussed in Chapter 10, affect temperament. This can be seen in the dynamic between maternal responsiveness—the mother’s acceptance of, and sensitivity to, the child—and the child’s genotype for the serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4. As discussed in Chapter 11 (pages 436 and 437), a particular allele variant of SLC6A4 is believed to make children especially reactive to their rearing environment. For children with this allele variant, high maternal responsiveness is associated with high levels of conscience at 15 to 52 months of age. Conversely, for children with this same variant, low maternal responsiveness is associated with low conscience. For children with a different genotype for SLC6A4, their level of conscience is unrelated to their mother’s responsiveness (Kochanska et al., 2011). This pattern is an example of differential susceptibility, whereby some children are more reactive than others are to the quality of parenting they receive, be it high or low quality.

The early development of conscience undoubtedly contributes to whether children come to accept the moral values of their parents and society. Indeed, in a longitudinal assessment of children’s behavioral and affective expression of guilt (in which they were led to believe that they had broken a valuable object), the children’s levels of guilt at 22 and 45 months of age predicted their morality at 54 months of age (e.g., their violating rules about touching prohibited toys, cheating on tasks, and expressing selfish and antisocial themes when discussing vignettes with morally relevant topics) (Kochanska et al., 2002). This, in turn, predicted whether they engaged in hurtful or problematic social behavior at 67 months (Kochanska et al., 2008). In a related study, children’s internalization of parental rules at 2 to 4 years of age predicted their self-perceptions as being moral at 67 months (Kochanska et al., 2010). Therefore, the nature of early parent–child disciplinary interactions sets the stage for children’s subsequent moral development.