[Vision2020] 4-Year-Ods Don't Act Like Trump

Sun May 21 16:06:39 PDT 2017

4-Year-Olds Don’t Act Like Trump

By ALISON GOPNIK New York TimesMAY 20, 2017

President Trump at the White House Easter egg roll in April. CreditChip
Somodevilla/Getty Images

The analogy is pervasive among his critics: Donald Trump is like a child.
Making him the president was like making a 4-year-old the leader of the
free world.

But the analogy is profoundly wrong, and it’s unfair to children. The
scientific developmental research of the past 30 years shows that Mr. Trump
is utterly unlike a 4-year-old.

Four-year-olds care deeply about the truth. They constantly try to seek out
information and to figure out how the world works. Of course, 4-year-olds,
as well as adults, occasionally lie. But Mr. Trump doesn’t just lie; he
seems not even to care whether his statements are true.

Four-year-olds are insatiably curious. One study found that the average
preschooler asks hundreds of questions per day. Just watch a toddler
“getting into everything” — endangering his own safety to investigate
interesting new objects like knives and toasters. Mr. Trump refuses to read
and is bored by anything that doesn’t involve him personally.

Four-year-olds can pay attention. They do have difficulty changing the
focus of their attention in response to arbitrary commands. But recent
studies show that even babies systematically direct their focus to the
events and objects that will teach them the most. They pay special
attention to events that contradict what they already believe. Mr. Trump
refuses to pay attention to anything that clashes with his preconceptions.
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Four-year-olds understand the difference between fantasy and reality. They
certainly enjoy pretend play, imagining that the world is full of villains
and that they are all-powerful heroes. But studies show that they know they
are pretending and understand that their imaginary companions are just
that: imaginary. Mr. Trump seems to have no sense of the boundary between
his self-aggrandizing fantasies and reality.
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Four-year-olds have a “theory of mind,” an understanding of their own minds
and those of others. In my lab we have found that 4-year-olds recognize
that their own past beliefs might have been wrong. Mr. Trump contradicts
himself without hesitation and doesn’t seem to recognize any conflict
between his past and present beliefs.

Four-year-olds, contrary to popular belief, are not egocentric or
self-centered. They understand and care about how other people feel and
think, and recognize that other people can feel and think differently from
them. In my lab, which studies the cognitive development of children, we
have found that even 1½-year-olds can understand that someone else might
want something different from what they want. They understand that someone
else might like broccoli, even though they themselves prefer crackers, and
they will help that person get what he wants.

In fact, children as young as 1½ demonstrate both empathy and altruism:
They will rush to comfort someone who is hurt, and they will spontaneously
go out of their way to help someone. In one study, if 1-year-olds saw a
stranger drop a pen and strain to reach for it, they would crawl over
obstacles to find the pen and give it to him. Mr. Trump displays neither
empathy nor altruism, and his egocentrism is staggering.

Four-year-olds have a strong moral sense. Children as young as 2½ say that
hurting another child is always wrong, even if an authority figure were to
say otherwise. Babies will avoid a puppet that has been mean to another
puppet. Mr. Trump admires authoritarian leaders who have no compunctions
about harming their own people.

Four-year-olds are sensitive to social norms and think that they and other
people should obey them. In one recent study, seeing a puppet play a game
involving particular rules led children to follow the rules themselves and
to expect other people to do so. Even 2- and 3-year-olds protested when
they saw someone break the rules. Mr. Trump has time and again shown his
contempt for norms of behavior in every community he has belonged to.

Now, all this is not to say that a 4-year-old would make a good chief
executive. Being president is certainly a grown-up job. Still, most adults,
even most presidents, and certainly the best presidents, manage to retain
some of their childlike traits — curiosity, openness to experience,
intuitive sensitivity to others.

We’d all be better off if Mr. Trump were more like that.

Alison Gopnik <http://www.alisongopnik.com/> is a professor of psychology
at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author, most recently,
of “The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child
Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children.”

-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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