A virtues approach to children’s kindness schemas

Abstract

Kindness is key to flourishing school communities. A social-cognitive approach to virtue emphasizes the importance of having an elaborate set of accessible mental representations (i.e., schemas) for expressing kindness. We employed a multi-informant, mixed method, longitudinal design across 6 months that focused on 4th and 5th graders’ (N = 320) kindness schemas using the open-ended question, ‘What are some ways you can show kindness to others?’ Results indicated that children’s schemas entailed wide-ranging content, expressing virtues of generosity, compassion, inclusion, civility, and harm avoidance. The breadth of children’s schema repertoires was positively associated with peer (but not teacher) ratings of their kindness, and virtues that attend to others’ vulnerability (compassion, inclusion) were the most indicative of children’s kindness from peers’ perspectives. Further, the breadth of kindness repertoires was associated with aspects of classroom ecology (e.g., peer acceptance), suggesting that positive classroom relationships may serve as sites for the cultivation of kindness schemas.