Abstract
Childhood self-control is currently receiving great scientific and public attention because it could predict much of adult’s life success and well-being. Specialized interventions based on findings in social psychology and neuroscience potentially enhance children’s capacity to exercise self-control. This perspective triggers hopes that self-control enhancement allows us to say good-bye for good to potentially unsafe psychopharmacological agents and electronic brain stimulants. This chapter provides an in-depth ethical analysis of pediatric self-control enhancement and points toward a series of serious conceptual and ethical concerns. First, it gives an overview of current psychological as well as neuroscientific research on self-control, and it presents longitudinal studies that emphasize the importance of childhood self-control for adult life success. Second, it critically discusses the concept of self-control presupposed in these approaches and points to crucial limitations. Going beyond an understanding of self-control as a sophisticated means of goal-achievement, I will argue for a comprehensive understanding that takes the inherent normativity of self-controlled behavior seriously. In that context, self-control enhancement appears as not necessarily desirable and occasionally even detrimental. Finally, this chapter questions the notion of childhood implicit in current research and how values typically put on this phase of life could get affected by self-control enhancement. I finish with an exploration of the conditions under which pediatric self-control enhancement is either impermissible, permissible, or maybe obligatory.
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Notes
- 1.
Sometimes a difference is drawn between so-called synchronic and diachronic self-control (Kennett 2001). Synchronic self-control is self-control at a time, exercised at the same moment when one is tempted to give in, consisting in successful withstanding. Diachronic self-control is self-control over time, exercised before and in expectation of moments of temptation in order to deliberatively avoid them and thereby to overcome temptation successfully. Many of the strategies described in the context of childhood self-control fit into this latter understanding of self-control: They make use of and foster capacities of diachronic self-control.
- 2.
By contrast, Cabrera et al. (2015) figured out that public attitudes toward self-control enhancement are comparatively hesitant if not negative. However, their findings do not seem to apply well to the above studies on two grounds. First, they proposed a hypothetical psychopharmacologically driven self-control enhancement, while in realworld scenarios, educational or training enhancement might be more likely. Second, Cabrera et al. pointed out that the publics they studied considered the effect of self-control on well-being and life success to be only mild to moderate, whereas the longitudinal studies considered here assumed that the effect of self-control is highly decisive on these matters. To date, it is unclear whether public opinion would change if the quest of self-control enhancement were put into these other contexts.
- 3.
I thank Bart Penders for introducing this case to me.
- 4.
Remind, the character of Ender Wiggin discussed above was essentially fictional and in subsequent analysis considered a case of child abuse.
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Horstkötter, D. (2019). Self-Control Enhancement in Children: Ethical and Conceptual Aspects. In: Nagel, S. (eds) Shaping Children. Advances in Neuroethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10677-5_3
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