The Origins of Caring, Helping, and Nonaggression: Parental Socialization, the Family System, and Cultural Influence

Ervin Staub

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511615795.011

10 - The Origins of Caring, Helping, and Nonaggression: Parental Socialization, the Family System, and Cultural Influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010

Ervin Staub

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Ervin Staub: Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

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Summary

What kind of socialization is required to raise caring, cooperative, helpful persons? What kinds of experiences are necessary for the development of characteristics that help people deal with crises by turning toward rather than against others, by inclusion rather than exclusion? What will help them resist movements, ideologies, and group influences that lead to confrontation and violence? How can they become self-assertive, able to stand up for their own rights and pursue their own goals, but also consider the rights, needs, and goals of others? What kind of socialization is required to develop people who are willing to make sacrifices to help others?

The way children are socialized is a basic manifestation of the culture and its institutions. Through socialization the culture recreates itself or creates itself anew. In order to socialize children in ways that lead to caring and nonaggression, a society (and its individual members) must value these characteristics. Currently, this is the case to a limited degree only in most countries; as compared with wealth, personal success, or patriotism, the relative value of caring about and helping others tends to be low. Therefore, changes in the socialization of children and in the values and institutions of society must progress simultaneously, supporting and reinforcing each other.

Sociobiologists (Trivers 1971; Wilson 1975) have proposed that altruism, the willingness to sacrifice in order to benefit others, is part of the human genetic makeup.

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Psychology of Good and Evil
Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others
, pp. 159 - 172

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615795.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2003

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