Parental Childrearing Practices, Conscience, and Resistance to Temptation of Sixth-Grade Children12

Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (i i), after interviewing a sample of mothers who had a child in kindergarten, describe several early socialization experiences that are likely lead conscience development. From the mother interviews, measures were obtained of the children's first feelings of guilt and signs of conscience. In order investigate the influence of these early experiences on later childhood behavior, a follow-up study (io) was made when the children were in the sixth grade. As one aspect of the follow-up study, which also includes measures of adult-role choice, aggression, and dependency, this study obtained a measure of degree of resistance temptation with a realistic game situation (6), where subjects, asked operate a ray-gun shooting gallery individually, were tempted transgress the in order win an appealing incentive. It was reasoned that all the children would have learned that behavior should be fair or to play according the rules and that an index of the strength of a child's conscience would be the extent which he conformed the of the game. This investigation, then, reports data on resistance temptation at