Moral shaping

La Belle sends this link:

In another study, Dr. Michelle Duffy, a psychologist in the University of Kentucky business school, is following 177 hospital workers. At the beginning of the study, the employees answered detailed questions about their work and relationships with managers. They also took a test of moral disengagement, a measure of people's sensitivity to others, for example, their views on the appropriateness of jokes, put-downs and coldness toward colleagues.

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...

Six months later, the workers took the same test again. Those who worked for bosses they found intimidating had become less sensitive, according to a preliminary reading of the responses. Those who worked for managers whom they perceived as supportive or fair, Dr. Duffy said, scored the same or better.

"It looks like if there's a strong leader in the group, then that person's behavior is contagious," she said. And if that leader is nasty, "this moral disengagement spreads like a germ."

Maybe it really is a germ.

So now, think of your home, and take another look at your relationship to your kids, eh? Because there isn't going to be any effective change anywhere else. As an old boss in a San Francisco law firm used to say, "You can't legislate morals."

And maybe this is a good time to have another look at Stan Goff's Hold on to Your Humanity.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.