Making character palatable again

It is baffling that physical courage is so common in the world and moral courage so rare. It is hard to find people whose manner is infused with kindness, humility and integrity, in other words, character. The issue is relevant because it is timeless. In "The Republic," Plato connects the human soul with the soul of the city. The soul's health correlates to that of the city. The soul of the city reflects the souls within the city. If there is order in the souls, there is order in the city.

 A society is based on the everyday practice of civic virtues. Without them, it is difficult to promote public welfare. "Government can establish laws governing taxes or safe driving speeds but it cannot have an auditor for every citizen or a policeman on every corner and it must have the consent of the governed to impose such rules in the first place. Social norms are the private analogue to government rules and regulations," according to Isabel Sawhill, a fellow of the Brookings Institution.

 We suffer from a lack of character both at the national and individual level. We have slipped into the quagmire of mediocrity. We figure that if the people around us seem to like us, we must be good enough. We fail to develop the integrity that can withstand popular disapproval. We find ourselves doing things that other people approve of even if they are wrong. In the process, a humiliating gap opens between what we have become and what we could be.

But is character possible in a vacuum? Can it be built by following abstract rules? Can it be learned in a classroom with students mechanically taking notes? Can we email or tweet it? Do we have role models whom we can emulate and measure ourselves by? Are there institutions or resources to inculcate and nurture it? In his 2014 essay 'Character is Experience', Joseph Fishkin, Professor of Law at the University of Texas, Austin writes, "There is no such thing as inner ability or character that sits separate and apart from experience. Every experience we have, every advantage or disadvantage, is filtered through the particular character and other traits of the person who experiences it. And all of those traits are themselves a product of what has come before."

How then do we develop kindness, humbleness and honesty? In a groundbreaking study titled 'Attribution, reinforcement, and altruism: A developmental analysis (1980)', psychologists Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler showed that a group of children were much more generous when their character was praised instead of their actions. Praising their character helped them internalise it as part of their identities. The children learned who they were from observing their own actions. The finding is reinforced by research led by US psychologist Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviours, nouns work better than verbs. Cheating was cut in half when instead of, "Please don't cheat," participants were told, "Please don't be a cheater." 

One of the most effective ways to improve bad behaviour is to express disappointment. According to independent reviews by Professor Eisenberg and David Shaffer, parents raise kind children by expressing disappointment and explaining why what they did was wrong, how it affected others, and how they can correct the situation. This helps children develop standards for watching their actions, compassion and responsibility for others. 

Unfortunately, we live in a world that has left many of us inarticulate about how to cultivate these human qualities. Is it possible to mainstream and address goodness in the public conversation? As preposterous as it may sound, Singapore did exactly that in 1997 when the country launched a Kindness Campaign aimed at encouraging people to make positive commitment to gracious living through simple acts of kindness in their daily activities.

Kindness, bring it on!

The writer is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.