Lee et al Flashcards
Aim
To invetsigaet the cross cultural differences in childrens understanding and moral evaluations of lying
To compare the responses of both canadian and chinese children to stroies that involve lying and truth telling, prosocial and antisocial situations.
Participants
120 chindren, with equal numbers of people aged of 7,9 and 11 yr olds. (50 boys and 50 girls)
108 Canadian children, with 40 7 year old, 36 9 year old, 32 11 yr olds. (58 boys adn 50 girls
IV
Whether teh chidlren had a prosocial or antiasocial story
Whether the children had the physical or social story
Age of children
The ethnicity of teh chidlren
DV
The rating of teh story characters deed by teh chidlren
The rating of what the characetr said- both rating ranged between very very good and very very naughty
What did teh storys include
Children were read four scenarios, includign illustartion- two antisocial and two proscoial
What happened after teh story?
Children were tested individually and the meaning of the words and symbols were explained and repeated every time a question was asked
How was teh story read?
The storys deed was read first, tehn child rated the deed, followed by teh seocnd part of teh story
How did they counterbalance teh experiment
The words good and naughty were altered as well as the order of tehg stories, in order to reduce order effects
Results: Prosocial/Truth telling
: Overall, children from both cultures rated the prosocial behaviours similarly. Canadian children at each age gave similar ratings to truth telling; however, Chinese children’s ratings became less positive as age increased.
Prosocial behaviour/lie-telling situatioins
Overall, Canadian children rated lie telling negatively, but as age increased their ratings became less negative. Overall, Chinese children’s ratings of lie telling changed from negative to positive as age increased.
Anti social behaviour/Truth telling sitautions
Children from both cultures rated the antisocial behaviours similarly. Children from both cultures rated truth telling in this situation very positively
Antisocial behaviour/lie telling
Both Chinese and Canadian children rated lie telling negatively in this condition. Overall, negative ratings increased with age, regardless of culture. Chinese 7-year-olds rated lie telling less negatively then older children in the physical story condition, while Canadian 7-year-olds rated lie telling less negatively than older children in the social story condition.
Conclusions
Specific cultural and social norms have an impact on childrens developing moral judgements, which in turn, are modified by age and experinece in a particular culture
Both chinese and canadian children show similar moral evlautions of lie telling and truth telliiing related to anti social behavbioru
