Key takeaways for caregivers
- Moral pride is the warm feeling you get after doing a good deed, such as helping someone or sharing.
- In our recent study of Canadian and Japanese children, we found that older children (nine- and 12-year-olds) felt more moral pride than younger children (six-year-olds).
- Compared to Japanese children, Canadian children were more likely to express moral pride following good deeds.
- For Japanese children, moral pride was positively associated with their general tendency to engage in kind behaviors.
- Parents and caregivers can guide children to notice and experience moral pride by pointing out their own or others’ kind acts, discussing how these acts affect others, and reflecting on the emotions that accompany acts of kindness.
Picture this: You and your child are walking through the produce section of the local grocery store. Suddenly, someone drops a box of cherry tomatoes and they scatter all over the floor. Before you can say a word, your child rushes over to offer a helping hand. How do you think your child would feel after engaging in this act of kindness?
Children learn to balance their own goals and others’ needs
Children’s social lives are complicated. They have to navigate their own desires, wishes, and impulses while learning to consider the needs of others and broader societal expectations. At times, children give in to their frustrations and pursue self-fulfilling goals at the expense of others (as do adults). But perhaps more commonly, children choose to engage in selfless acts of kindness (such as helping a stranger pick up cherry tomatoes).
Why do children choose to be kind?
Parents and other caregivers begin teaching their children kindness as soon as they are born by showing sensitivity to infants’ needs and modeling care and concern for their well-being. Over time, caregivers explicitly teach their children how and when to behave kindly toward others through demonstrations and conversations (e.g., “sharing is caring”).
Children continue to develop their kindness alongside same-aged peers in school as they learn to consider others’ perspectives and build their understanding of what it means to be a caring person. But once children develop their repertoires of kindness, what motivates them to continue to be kind across time, contexts, and targets?
What are moral emotions?
Moral emotions arise in situations when individuals violate or promote moral values of justice, fairness, and care. In other words, moral emotions guide people to do good and avoid doing bad. Most research on the moral emotional motivators of children’s kindness has focused on guilt and sympathy. Guilt (i.e., feeling regret over wrongdoing) and sympathy (i.e., feeling concern for another) tend to deter children from engaging in harmful acts and propel them toward kindness.
Nevertheless, children’s emotional landscapes are vast and many other moral emotions go into children’s capacity for kindness. In a recently published paper, my colleagues and I argue that moral pride (i.e., positive feelings about oneself that follow kind acts) may be a critical kindness-building emotion that is often overlooked.
The development of moral pride across cultures
Children begin to experience pride-related emotions early in development and by two years of age, tend to feel happier when giving treats to others than when receiving treats themselves. Over time, children’s moral pride continues to grow and sets the foundation for the development of moral identity in adolescence.
Theoretically, moral pride motivates kindness by fostering a sense of personal fulfillment and purpose; it also encourages individuals to keep engaging in the kind action that incited the feeling in the first place. However, we still know relatively little about the development of this emotion in childhood and whether it functions in the same way across cultural contexts.
Most research on moral pride has been conducted with children and youth from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries, which has led to a lack of focus on important cultural differences. In Canada, the United States, and some European countries like Italy and Spain, pride is highly valued, expected, and celebrated in children. In contrast, pride tends to be discouraged in East Asian cultures because it contradicts values of humility and modesty.
Thus, the broader cultural context in which children are raised may influence whether moral pride is encouraged and, as a result, whether it motivates children’s good deeds. The study my colleagues and I conducted was one of the first to use a cross-cultural approach to investigate the development of moral pride and its potential role in promoting kind behavior in children.
What did we study?
We had two primary research aims:
1. To measure moral pride at different ages in different cultures
We recruited six-, nine-, and 12-year-olds from Canada and Japan (from middle to high socioeconomic backgrounds) to participate in our study because middle childhood to early adolescence is a critical time for developing moral emotions.
Children from Canada were of European, Asian, Central and South American, or mixed ethnic backgrounds and participated in the study in English. Children from Japan were East Asian and took part in the study in Japanese.
To measure moral pride, children were told two stories and asked to imagine themselves as the protagonists. Each story featured an act of kindness that involved sacrificing something fun (e.g., the protagonist skipped recess to help a peer with a task).
Following each story, children were asked how they would feel if they had done the good deed. Positive emotions (e.g., happy, good, proud) that were supported by moral reasons (e.g., “because I’m thinking about other people and I’m not just thinking about me”) were considered expressions of moral pride.
2. To test the kindness-building function of moral pride
We also wanted to know whether children who experienced strong feelings of moral pride following acts like helping and sharing were also kind in their daily interactions with others.
Parents (in Canada) and teachers (in Japan) completed surveys and rated how likely it was for the participating children to engage in various acts of kindness (e.g., “My child/student often volunteers to help others [parents, teachers, other children”).
Our Findings
Moral pride is felt across ages and cultural contexts
Canadian children were more likely to report moral pride than Japanese children, likely due to divergent cultural norms regarding expressing emotions in the context of achievement. While it is encouraged and expected for children in Canada to feel proud after doing something good, Japanese parents encourage modesty and humility, and thus expect children to temper their joy following achievements.
In both Canada and Japan, older children (nine- and 12-year-olds) were more likely to report moral pride than were younger children (six-year-olds). This suggests that the period between six and nine years may be a promising time to encourage the development of moral pride across cultures.
Moral pride is a kindness-building emotion
Japanese children who reported moral pride were frequently kind in their daily interactions at school. Although pride in general may be discouraged in Japanese culture, moral pride may have benefits for supporting social harmony (at least in a school setting) and thus may serve a positive function.
(Our study was correlational so we cannot be certain that moral pride causes kindness – rather, we found evidence that moral pride and kindness tend to co-occur in Japanese children.)
While it is encouraged and expected for children in Canada to feel proud after doing something good, Japanese parents encourage modesty and humility, and thus expect children to temper their joy following achievements.
For Canadian children, moral pride was not associated with kindness. One explanation for this difference could be that we measured children’s kindness in different ways across the two samples (i.e., in Japan teachers reported on children’s kindness, and in Canada parents reported on children’s kindness).
Thus, we may have captured different features of children’s kindness across cultural groups, as parents usually observe children’s behaviors in interactions at home with family members, while teachers typically observe children’s behaviors at school with peers. Research is needed to understand more thoroughly if Canadian children’s moral pride is associated with their kindness in the school context.
Four ways to identify and encourage moral pride
Research on the development of children’s moral pride is in its infancy. Although we have not established a concrete link between moral pride and kindness cross-culturally, there are psychological benefits to experiencing moral pride for children’s self-esteem and development of moral identity. Here are a few ways parents and caregivers can support the development of moral pride in their children:
- Model your feelings of moral pride. Children learn a lot from observation and tend to take on and mimic their parents’ emotions and behaviors. Expressing your feelings of pride following kind acts may support children’s own development of moral pride.
- Point out signs of moral pride. When you see your child or someone else help another person, look at their facial expressions and the words they use. If they are smiling and using kind words such as “it’s my pleasure to help!” they may be experiencing moral pride. Point out such situations to your child. Helping your child understand what moral pride is and when it typically occurs in others can help them identify the emotion in themselves.
- Engage children in conversations about emotions and kindness. Ask children how they feel after helping or sharing with someone, and talk about why they wanted to help or share with them in the first place. These discussions may encourage children to process their feelings of pride and increase their awareness of the emotion.
- Identify moral pride in popular media. Together with your child, look for situations in story books, movies, and games where moral pride may occur. Discussing a range of instances that trigger moral pride may enrich children’s understanding of the different types of behaviors and contexts that may incite the emotion.
Expressing your feelings of pride following kind acts may support children’s own development of moral pride.
Children tend to feel proud of their good deeds – a tendency that increases with age. While this emotion may have benefits in the moment (it feels great to feel proud of yourself!), the advantages of moral pride may reach beyond the immediate context. That is, in some cultures, moral pride may inspire children to continue to spread their kindness to others.
The next time your child tells you they feel proud of themselves for carrying out a good deed, such as helping a stranger pick up spilled cherry tomatoes, consider that feelings of moral pride may be a signal of their commitment to kindness.
