Developmental Study - Lee et al Flashcards
What is an individualistic culture?
Societies which emphasise the individual, their rights, attitudes and needs
What is a collectivist culture?
Societies which emphasis the group, its decisions and needs and the duties of the individual to that group
What is cross-cultural research?
Research which investigates psychological concepts in people from different cultures
What is the aims?
To see if Chinese and Canadian children would differ in how they rate truth-telling in pro-social settings (where something has done something good) and anti-social settings (where someone has done something bad)
Examples of physical story
Picking up litter in school yard, tidying up classroom during break, tearing pages from library book, scribbling on page from library book
Examples of social story
Money for another child to buy lunch, only for another child to go on trip, pushing over a child because of a skipping rope, pushing over a new child they didn’t like
What are the strengths of a cross-sectional study?
Variety, generalisable, quicker than longitudinal, less risk of people dropping out
What are the weakness of a cross-sectional study?
Participant variables, individual differences/participant variables between age groups, snapshot of development, larger sample needed
What were the IVs?
Nationality of the child, age of the child, how the character behaved in the story, what was affected by the behaviour of the child in the story
What were the two nationalities used?
Chinese and Canadian
What were the age categories?
7, 9, and 11
What are the two ways that the character behaved in the story?
Prosocial and antisocial
What was affected by the behaviour of the child in the story?
Physical or Social
How many children were from China?
120 (20 in each group)
How many children were from Canada?
108 (36 in 7, 40 in 9, 32 in 11)
What city in China did they come from?
Hangzhou
What city in Canada did they come from?
Fredericton
How were the story conditions allocated?
Randomly
How were they seen?
Individually
What was explained to them first?
The rating scale
What did the children use when answering the questions?
Words, symbols or both
How many stories did they listen to?
4 of each physical or social story
How was counterbalancing used?
Through randomly allocating stories to one of two orders and then giving about half of the children one order and the rest of the children the other order.
What does the pro-social - truth telling mean?
Doing a good deed and telling the truth about it
What does the pro-social - lie telling mean?
Doing a good deed and lying about it
What does the anti-social - truth telling mean?
Doing a bad thing and telling the truth about it
What does the anti-social - lie telling mean?
Doing a bad thing and lying about it
What did the analysis of data focus on?
The culture the children came from, the children’s ages, and the particular story they were responding to
What were the results of story one (pro-social behaviour/tell the truth about it)?
No significant difference, Canada consistent ratings over age groups, China viewed telling the truth less positively as age increased
What were the results of story two (pro-social behaviour/tell a lie about it)?
Canada children viewed lie telling as negative but less negative as age increases, Chinese children aged 7 rated the lie negatively but age 11 rated it postively
What were the results of story three (anti-social behaviour/tell the truth about it)?
No significant difference, all rated truth telling in an anti-social situation positive
What were the results of story four (anti-social behaviour/tell a lie about it)?
Culture less important, negative ratings increase with age in both cultures
What are some qualitative data?
Nearly 1/2 of Chinese children who had rated truth telling negatively for pro-social behaviour (story 1) as the person “wanting” praise
Around 1/3 of Chinese children believed the person shouldn’t leave their name when doing a good deed (this explains their positive rating for story 2)
What is the key quantitative finding?
70% of Chinese 11-year-olds rated lying positively in prosocial stories compared to just 25% of Chinese 7-year-olds
What are the conclusions?
Moral development differs in different cultures as a result of socio-cultural norms and practices - not just a result of cognitive development
What ethical guidelines were upheld?
Consent (by parents and their schools), right to withdraw (we can assume), protection from harm (stories weren’t particularly upsetting)
What ethical guidelines were broken?
May have been uncomfortable about being alone in the room with the researcher (or could have been upset if they did not understand the story or about the stories where a child was rushed to the ground)
Internal Reliability points
Standardised procedure used with the same instructions given to all children and each read 4 stories
External reliability points
Sample size for each group was fairly large so should represent a consistent effect
Internal (construct) validity points
Demand characteristics may have been an issue as children may have worked out they were supposed to say telling the truth was good and lying was bad.
Also may have had an issue with translating the story might not have understood the story
External (ecological) validity points
Fairly realistic situations that the children would be familiar with so ecological validity should be high. But what they say is right/wrong may not be what they would do in that sitation in real life
Ethnocentrism points
Should not be because they compared two very different cultures - but could be cultural bias in the stones used which might make them biased towards Canadian children - only two countries compared
How this study links to the nat/nur debate?
Suggests that morality can be taught and affected by the culture we grow up in
How this study links to free/det debate?
Suggests our morality is determined by where we grow up
How this study links to the red/hol debate?
Could be more holistic as it suggests age and culture both have an impact on our judgement of lying being right or wrong
How this study links to the ind/sit debate?
Whilst age and stage of moral development is an individual factor, the culture we grow up in and also influences our morality is situational
