[bane]

There's a kind of debate forming on individuals deriving good behavior from core moral principals vs good behavior being externally supplied by some kind of punitive framework. It seems that in cases where the behavior parameters are externally supplied, a person may not have developed any ability to figure out what to do when circumstances change outside of the parameters that were set for them. Whereas when people are taught principals and taught to derive behavior from those principals, they simply don't need lots of rules (if the principals are good ones I suppose), and in many cases will reject rules that seem arbitrary and not useful.

I think it then follows, if this turns out to be the case, that people who are raised in rule "free" environments learn more independent thought and reasoning and more creativity than people who are raised in highly restrictive environments where their internal thought processes may be less developed, and their tasking and behavior needs to be externally supplied.

However, I think this is a very difficult idea to use for child rearing. The balance and thought that needs to go into teaching good principals is much harder than simply making a list of rules. In the worst case, a child will get neither.

[hueving]

Sounds like phony pop psychology. I was raised with strict rules and was able to derive what to do in other circumstances because I was still taught moral principals. I know plenty of people raised with strict rules but nobody that was raised with completely unexplained rules so it's a bit of a strawman comparison.

[bane]

I'm not a psychologist, but my understanding from people I've spoken to in various psych disciplines is that this is a fertile area of research and there are fairly regularly published papers on this topic. There appear to be deep connections between derivation of behavior based on principles and other-oriented empathy and punitively enforced or superficial behavior training and tendencies towards authoritarianism and various other negative tendencies. Apparently the theories coming out of this are making inroads into various therapeutic and treatment approaches for everything from children's therapy to prisoner rehabilitation.

> but nobody that was raised with completely unexplained rules so it's a bit of a strawman comparison.

That's your strawman creation. I never claimed people were raised with arbitrary and unexplained rules. Typically strict rules are given punitive reasons as motivation for following, not some intrinsic rationale within the rule -- and that's precisely the difference.

"Wash the dishes or you'll be sent to your room" doesn't teach why you should wash the dishes, only that you'll be punished for not doing so.

"I should wash the dishes so I have clean ones to eat off of later, eating off of clean dishes prevents sickness." Provides a complex rationale to drive the behavior.

The punitive approach requires no brainpower to follow, there's no specific reason why the effect (punishment) follows from cause (not washing the dishes) other than it was something imposed.

The principle based approach requires understanding logical cause and effect, chain of events, pre-planning and might drive the person to investigate why dirty dishes make one sick, opening up inquiry and forming connections into hygiene, medicine, pathogens, etc.

Given a different, but similar situation, why should the rules based person create a behavior?

"Wash the thermometer before and after use" is something the principle trained person would come up with naturally based on prior experience and reasoning, but unless some cause and punishment were set out for the rules trained person, it's likely they won't arrive at that behavior.

More sinister, and the context I'm familiar with this work in, is in advertising, building and forming habits. Advertisers are seeking to train consumers to logically arrive at buying their product rather having to be constantly reminded to. Especially since a company has much more trouble "punishing" a consumer for not buying their stuff than a parent might a child. If you can convince a consumer to derive the thought themselves to buy your product, then you own that consumer and no longer really need to advertise to reach them.

[hueving]

>Typically strict rules are given punitive reasons as motivation for following, not some intrinsic rationale within the rule -- and that's precisely the difference.

No, that's the strawman. Rules without explanations. It has nothing to do with punitive enforcement.

>"Wash the dishes or you'll be sent to your room" doesn't teach why you should wash the dishes, only that you'll be punished for not doing so.

Strawman again. The unexplained reasoning is the problem, not the punitive action.

>The punitive approach requires no brainpower to follow, there's no specific reason why the effect (punishment) follows from cause (not washing the dishes)

Ugh, I hope I made the point clear above, but I'll state it one last time: punitive punishments are not the same as unexplained rules.

The rest of your comment is based on this strawman assumption that all parenting using punitive actions follows this stupid method of not explaining rules. It's just as dumb as assuming the opposite (i.e. parents that don't punish children don't teach their children any morals).

[inimino]

"Principles", not "principals".