Etiquette and Socioemotional Skills

"Children don’t always understand the reasons for social niceties or good manners, and may view them as arbitrary or nonsensical. Helping children understand the “whys” of social etiquette can facilitate their buy-in and, thus, their social development. For example, you could explain, “When we say hello and look people in the eye, it sends the message that we are glad to see them. We value them and want them to feel welcome.” — BrightHorizons.com on helping to foster socioemotional development 

A 2016 study found the value and importance of social skills in children, and that keeping more children on track to high school graduation, full-time jobs and out of the criminal justice system, could start in kindergarten.

Researchers tracked more than 700 children from kindergarten to age 25. They found students’ manners and social skills (cooperation, listening to others and helping classmates), held strong clues for how those children would fare 20 years later. In some cases, social skills were better predictors of future success, than academic skills.

Damon Jones, a senior research associate at Penn State University, discussed the finding, and said that the study was aimed at exploring the influential role of socioemotional skills in children in terms of human development in general.

"You know, there are a lot of studies that looked at  cross-research disciplines that look at socioemotional skills. Sometimes, they’re called soft skills, sometimes noncognitive skills. And what these represent are kind of key characteristics in children representing things like managing their state, having good relationships, being responsible socially, interacting well with adults, and then getting things done. It’s really key skills in early development that you can see would be very important in being successful in school and in relationships." 

The U.S. study, of four different sites, Durham, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, Central Pennsylvania, and Seattle, Washington, was done over a 20 year period. According to Jones, "We were really interested to see these really long-term predictions. I think, a lot of times, when people look at socioemotional skills, they may be focused on more concurrent outcomes, like how well the child is doing in school or their relationships. In this case, we really wanted to look at markers of well-being. And we had great data, where we had — we were able to follow these children for over 20 years, and were able to see these markers of well-being across domains of education, employment, criminal activity, mental health, substance abuse, and use of public services.

And so a kind of secondary goal of the study was, it’s been shown in a lot of research that socioemotional skills are malleable, they’re something that can be improved throughout child development, and there are very effective programs that can do that. So we set out to see if we could assess, if we could actually gauge these relationships at a very young age, which is why we looked at kindergarten age predicting these long-term outcomes."

The researchers were surprised to find these socioemotional skills were uniquely predictive of the long-term outcomes. Outcomes that were measured in adolescence and outcomes that were measured in mid-adulthood that were based on court records for some criminal activities.

But they were a unique prediction, in the sense that researchers controlled 4 other key aspects of the child, early academic ability at age 5, characteristics of their home environment, such as socioeconomic status, their behavior as rated by mothers and teachers, that allowed researchers to make a unique prediction from these early socioemotional skills. According to Jones, "We found significant associations in all those domains, crime, education, employment, substance use, mental health. For instance, children — for each point on the social competence scale, children were twice as likely to receive a college degree by age 25."

What intervention should be made in working with young children, that might make a difference in their lives later? Jones believes there’s a lot of hope in making a difference in children's future, because so much research is showing the value of these socioemotional skills. Research shows there are really effective evidence-based programs that can help improve children’s socioemotional skills.

"And by looking and being able to gauge these skills at this age, to able to see where they may be headed 20 years down the road, could really inform policy for planning intervention for these type of things, given that we know it’s something that is malleable, it’s something that is vital for their development, along with academic ability and academic instruction and parental investment." —Professor Damon Jones, Penn State University

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia