Why You Should Guilt-Trip Your Kids

They’ll thank you later.

- Libby Copeland

A few years ago, researchers in Germany set out to plumb the moral consciences of small children. They invited a series of 2- and 3-year-olds to play with a marble track in a lab. Close to the track—inauspiciously close—was a block tower that one of the adult experimenters claimed to have painstakingly constructed. Just before turning her back, she asked them not to damage it.

Needless to say, the game was rigged. After a few runs, a marble would knock over part of the tower, at which point the experimenter responded with what the resulting journal article described as a “mildly sad” tone. “Oh no,” she would say, then ask what had happened. In some versions of the experiment, the child seemed to be to blame; in others, an adult who was helping with the experiment toppled the tower. The kids’ reactions revealed a lot about how social-emotional development progresses during these key years. While many of the 2-year-olds seemed sympathetic to the researcher’s plight, the 3-year-olds went beyond sympathy. When they believed that they’d caused the accident, they were more likely than the 2-year-olds to express regret and try to ’x the tower. In other words, the 3-year-olds’ behavior varied depending on whether they felt responsible.