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 

Etiquette at the Door

A Question of Etiquette: Do you hold the door for others?

Do “everyday acts of etiquette, such as holding doors for other people, reflect the internal simulation of acts of social cooperation?”

American researchers stake out a door and find it far from an open and shut case

Whether one person holds a door open for another is not simply a question of etiquette, says a study by Joseph P Santamaria and David A Rosenbaum of Pennsylvania State University. No, they say. Nothing simple about it.

Santamaria and Rosenbaum worked to pursue the answer through a tangle of belief, logic, probability, perception and calculation. Their study, Etiquette and Effort: Holding Doors for Others, was published in 2011 in the journal Psychological Science. It is, one way or another, a gripping read.

Santamaria and Rosenbaum selected a door that gets heavy use by people entering or exiting a building. “We recorded the behaviour of 148 individuals approaching and passing through the door. We determined whether the first person held the door for the follower or followers, how far the follower or followers were from the door, how long it took for the follower or followers to reach the doorway, and how many followers (one or two) followed the first person at the door.”

“We found,” they reveal, “that the closer the follower or followers were to the door, the more likely people were to hold the door open.” The researchers devised the experiment to test their new hypothesis — their highly educated guess — as to what happens in the mind of a person faced with a decision to either hold the door open for the next person, or not hold the door open.

“Specifically, we hypothesised that decisions about whether to hold a door open depend on calculations of the odds that one person’s holding the door would require less effort than would each individual’s opening the door on his or her own.”

Santamaria and Rosenbaum’s small, specific door-holding hypothesis is a toy version of their big, general hypothesis: “We hypothesised that everyday acts of etiquette, such as holding doors for other people, reflect the internal simulation of acts of social cooperation.” Their theory aims for a deep level of understanding: “According to [our] view, etiquette, or the form of physically expressed etiquette considered here, is not just a symbol for respect; it is also a means of reducing physical effort for the group.”

In the final paragraph, the study points out one of its obvious limitations: “Some forms of etiquette do not concern physical effort (eg napkin folding).”

The Santamaria/Rosenbaum study follows distantly in the tradition of John Trinkaus. Professor Trinkaus published nearly 100 academic studies about things that annoyed him. His paper, called Exiting a Building: An Informal Look, published in 1990, reported the behaviour of 819 people leaving a New York City building that had two side-by-side doors, one held in the open position, the other closed. Trinkaus observed that approximately 70% of those people chose to exit through the open door.

Marc Abrahams is editor of the Annals of ImprobableResearch and organiser of the Ig Nobel prizes - From May 2015, TheGuardian.com

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette, Self-Control Are Contagious

Studies showed there is a direct effect of our friends' behavior on our own behavior, and the findings apply not only to the people we choose to hang out with, but those we are forced to hang out with, such as co-workers.

People you spend time with affect your behavior, for good or bad, research finds...

If you spend time with people who exhibit self-control -- resisting the death-by-chocolate cake after a restaurant meal, for instance -- you can expect your own self-control to be pretty good, too, according to new research. But the opposite seems true, too: Spending time with people with less-than-ideal self-control will influence you negatively, the researchers found.

"Before, we knew people tended to hang out with other people who were like themselves," said Michelle vanDellen, a visiting assistant professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, who led the research, which was published online in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"But in these studies, we actually show there is a direct effect of our friends' behavior on our own behavior," vanDellen said. The findings apply, she said, "not only to the people we [choose to] hang out with, but those we are forced to hang out with," such as co-workers on the job.

The conclusions came from five studies conducted by vanDellen and her co-author, Rick Hoyle of Duke University.

The best study, she said, and the most fun, involved 71 participants and two plates of food -- one stacked with carrot sticks, the other with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. The participants either watched someone exhibit self-control by eating the carrots and leaving the cookies, or vice versa. Later, the participants took self-control tests (not involving cookies and carrots). Those who had watched a person eat cookies did less well than those who had watched someone eat carrots.

In another study, the researchers found that 36 participants randomly assigned to think of a friend with good self-control persisted longer on a handgrip test used to measure self-control than did the participants assigned to think about a friend with bad self-control.

What about online behavior? Why are people so rude online? According to research from professors at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh, browsing Facebook lowers our self control. The effect is most pronounced with people whose Facebook networks were made up of close friends, the researchers say. Most of us present an enhanced image of ourselves on Facebook. This positive image—and the encouragement we get, in the form of "likes"—boosts our self-esteem. And when we have an inflated sense of self, we tend to exhibit poor self-control. "Think of it as a licensing effect: You feel good about yourself so you feel a sense of entitlement," says Keith Wilcox, assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School and co-author of the study. "And you want to protect that enhanced view, which might be why people are lashing out so strongly at others who don't share their opinions." These types of behavior—poor self control, inflated sense of self—"are often displayed by people impaired by alcohol," he adds. From WSJ.com

Another study involved assigning 42 people to list the names of friends with good and bad self-control. As the participants took a test designed to measure self-control, a name was flashed very briefly on a computer screen. Those who saw the name of a friend with good self-control did better on the test than those who saw the name of a friend with poor self-control.

The researchers also assigned 112 people to write about a friend with good self-control, a friend with bad self-control or an outgoing friend. Those who wrote about a friend with good self-control did best on a test of self-control, those who wrote about a friend with bad self-control did worst and those who wrote about an outgoing friend scored in between the others.

In the fifth study, 117 people were randomly assigned to write about friends with good or bad self-control. Those who wrote about a friend with good self-control did better on word identification tests related to self-control, the researchers found.

"I think the message is really two-fold," vanDellen said of the research. "The first is, one way you can improve your behavior is by finding social networkers that support you." It makes sense, she said, to seek out people you know have self-control if you want to boost your own.

The other message, she said, is accountability. The research suggests that others aren't just watching your behavior when you show a lack of self-control but might actually be influenced by it. If a woman's husband is trying to lose weight, for instance, the last thing she should do is act like a lazy person who doesn't exercise in front of him, she said.

The research findings make sense, said Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. "Surrounding yourself with motivated, healthy people improves your odds of staying in control," she said.

Diekman said that's certainly the case with healthy eating. "When it comes to making healthy choices, we know that it is easier to skip dessert, limit portions or purchase the right foods if others we are with support these behaviors," she said.

From a 2010 article in “Going Places,” and a 2012 article in WSJ.com 


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

Children Behave Better in a Clean House

“Household chaos is able to work in an additive way and predict children's problem behaviour over and above parenting, and is particularly potent when in combination with less positive/more negative parenting.”– The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Parents often feel torn between giving their children attention and doing domestic tasks – it has been a while since you spent time playing with little Jimmy, but the house could do with a vacuum. Should a tidy, well-organised home be a priority, though? Overall, studies show that children in chaotic households behave less well. 

Chaos is defined in these studies by asking participants how much they agree with simple statements such as, "You can't hear yourself think in our home" and "We are usually able to stay on top of things".  Children from disorganised homes where there is a lack of routine are more likely to be rude or antisocial. But poverty or lack of education could explain that. Indeed, crowding – insufficient accommodation space in relation to family size – is linked to problem behaviour. Interestingly, however, chaos is not more common in low-income families: rather, it overlaps with the way parents relate to their children. 

“In country houses having no 'modern conveniences,' every kitchen stove may have an ample boiler always filled with clean water, so that at all times hot water may be available for bathing purposes. It is unpardonable to live without at least this much provision for an essential condition of civilized life-- 'the cleanliness that is next to godliness'.” From Etiquette, Agnes H. Morton, 1919

Carers of small children from chaotic homes have been found to be significantly less responsive when relating to their offspring. They tend to be less involved, less vocally stimulating and more likely to interfere with attempts at exploration. They use more physical punishment, monitor their children's activities less, and are less consistent in how they discipline and for what. They also tend to feel less confident about their ability to control their children's behaviour.

A study of English families suggests how chaos and this pattern of parenting connect up. It asked 118 parents and their four- to eight-year-olds how chaotic their homes were, and about the warmth and enjoyment of each parent in caring for the child. Overall, in chaotic homes there was less parental warmth and enjoyment, and more anger and hostility. This remained true after gender and the age of the children were taken into account. As expected, the most difficult children were in homes with both the most negative parenting and the greatest level of chaos.

Children from disorganised homes where there is a lack of routine are more likely to be rude or antisocial.

But of particular interest was that the role of fathers was more important than that of mothers. The biggest impact on children was where the father was cold and joyless, and the home highly chaotic. In most studies of most subjects, since mothers tend to spend the greater amount of time with children and do more of the housework, it is more common for their relationship with children to be more significant than that of fathers.

Also, interestingly, positive parenting did not reduce the impact of chaos – chaos clearly had an independent effect. At the same time, an organised home did not eliminate problem behaviour in the children if the parenting was negative.

So it does seem that a measure of domestic order is a good idea, even if it does not make up for unengaged, joyless parenting. As countless studies have proved, children need boundaries. But what is the right balance between a warm, loving home and a tidy, organised one?

"Many mothers with small children feel overstretched. If fathers take up the slack and seriously engage, they can reduce the chaos and increase the amount of warmth and fun."

On the one hand, it would seem that no amount of huggy, lovey stuff will compensate if the house is a tip and the child has no idea when he will be getting supper or where his school clothes are. On the other, making your house a germ-free zone ruled by a military schedule is not enough.

Most important of all, it seems we dads can be critical, especially if the mum is chaos prone. Many mothers with small children feel overstretched. If fathers take up the slack and seriously engage, they can reduce the chaos and increase the amount of warmth and fun.

        

The main article, by Oliver James, first appeared in The Guardian, January 2011

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

Etiquette, Scents and Sensibilities

 Common Scents, Etiquette and Courtesies

According to a 2009 TIME Magazine article, an experiment was conducted to test people's propensity toward charity and good manners by using common scents. Ninety-nine participants were assigned to either a Windex-scented room or a neutral-smelling room and given a list of tasks to complete. Included in the list was a request for volunteers and donations for "Habitat for Humanity".

Researchers on morality and scientists agree that people do strongly associate physical cleanliness with “purity of conscience.” It is the thought at the heart of old sayings like “cleanliness is next to godliness ...”

Results revealed that people in the Windex scented room were more likely to give money and help others than those in the room that was not scented with Windex. According to co-author and social psychologist Adam Galinsky, from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, "Economists and even psychologists haven't been paying much attention to the fact that small changes in our environment can have dramatic effects on behavior. We underemphasize these subtle environmental cues," he says.

Researchers on morality and scientists agree that people do strongly associate physical cleanliness with "purity of conscience". It is the thought at the heart of old sayings like "cleanliness is next to godliness" and "as evidenced by the widespread use of cleansing ceremonies to wash away sins in various religions around the world".

Ninety-nine participants were assigned to either a Windex-scented room or a neutral-smelling room.

Another study, published in a 2008 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin showed that people are more critical and judgmental about certain moral issues when exposed to the vapors of a commercially available, "fart" scented spray. At Etiquipedia, we'll stick with the Windex, thank you.