In this comprehensive study of conscience development in the first four years of life, child temperament and parent-child socialization and relationship will be studied as two critical sets of influences which, in a complex interplay, contribute to conscience formation. Children and parents (N=110) will be studied at age 8-months, 20-22 months, 36-38 months, and 48-50 months. At each assessment, child temperament (fearfulness and inhibitory or effortful control), parent-child socialization and relationship, parents' personality, and child conscience will be measured, using a rich combination of observations in many naturalistic home and laboratory contexts, parent ratings, parent and child self-reports, projective methods, and cognitive instruments. Six questions will be addressed. One, the child's temperamental fearfulness and inhibitory control will be explored as contributors to the developing conscience. Two, the qualities of parent-child socialization that promote conscience development will be examined, particularly discipline deemphasizing power and the mutually positive, responsive, binding, a cooperative parent-child orientation. Three, informed by provocative initial data, the child's temperament will be examined as a moderator of socialization. Specifically, multiple pathways to conscience, different for children differing temperament, are postulated. Four, the development and organization of early conscience will be explored, including the developmentally changing relations among moral affect, conduct, and cognition, and the role of child temperament as a moderator of these relations. Five, the role of child early compliance to parent, particularly its one form, committed compliance, will be examined as an early precursor of conscience. Six, the effects of parents' personality on child conscience development will be studied. This work will thus integrate the roles of the child's temperament, individuality and the relationship with parents in early moral development, and le ad to a comprehensive model of early conscience formation. Conscience is the internal guide and monitor of conduct that assures that we distinguish right from wrong, adhere to societal standards, restrain antisocial impulses, and engage in prosocial acts even in the absence of surveillance. Individual consciences are fundamental for the adaptive functioning of individual and societies. If successfully instilled in the early years, conscience is a more powerful regulator of conduct than any system of external social control. Conscience is a hallmark and ultimate goal of human socialization and a classic topic in human development, and yet, we know little about factors that contribute to its successful development or its disturbances. My extremely promising data from the previously sponsored study strongly point to the critical role of early childhood as the time when the foundations of conscience are established. They also support the view of conscience as multiply determined, with the child's biologically-founded temperament and the qualities of socialization within the family as two major sets of influences that jointly contribute to the early conscience formation. This study will further highlight the interplay of these two fundamental sets of influences on adaptive maladaptive development of conscience. It will elucidate not only how the child's temperamental individuality and the qualities of the relationship with parents contribute to conscience development, but, most importantly, how different parenting styles promote conscience in children differing in their temperaments. As such, this program of research is highly relevant to the 'fostering successful families' component of the Human Capital research agenda. In view of the current widespread problems reflecting deficits of conscience, such as antisocial, cruel, or destructive behaviors detrimental to individuals and to the social system this research is particularly timely. Ultimately, it will result in a comprehensive model of early conscience formation that will inform basic developmental theory, social policy, and parenting and early prevention programs.
