Lee's Study Flashcards
What’s the background of Lee’s study?
Hofstede proposed;
Individualistic - people’s identities are defined by personal choice and achievements; self reliance and rights of individuals to do their own thing
Collectivist - people’s identities are defined by groups they see themselves as a part of; group goals take priority over individual goals and maintaining harmony is important
What type of culture does China have?
Collectivist culture - 1.4 billion people
What type of culture does Canada have?
Individualist culture - 38 million
What are the core principles of the Chinese collectivist culture?
Honesty and Modesty
- Don’t show off or seek praise for achievements or brag about their achievements or seek the teacher’s praise.
- They are also taught the importance of being honest and are encouraged to report misdeeds by themselves or others.
What are the core principles of the Canadian individualist culture?
Equality, Respect for other cultures and politeness
In western cultures such as Canada, ‘white lies’ are tolerated to avoid hurting someone’s feelings and children are not discouraged from promoting their achievements.
What was the aim of Lee’s study?
- To see if Chinese and Canadian children would differ in how they rated truth-telling and lie-telling in pro-social settings, where someone has done something good.
- To see if Chinese and Canadian children would differ in how they rated truth-telling and lie-telling in anti-social settings, where someone has done something bad.
What were the aims of the study?
Culture
- find out if the culture a child grows up (collectivist or individualist) in affects their views about truth-telling and lying
AGE
- to find out if views of children about truth-telling and lying change as they grow older
What is a cross-sectional study?
Studies that compare different population groups (eg. different ages) at a single point in time
What sample did Lee use?
CHINA
Aged 7 - 40 (20m/20f)
Aged 9 - 40 (20/20)
Aged 11 - 40 (20/20)
Canada
Aged 7 - 36 (20m/16f)
Aged 9 - 40 (24m/16f)
Aged 11 - 32 (14m/18f)
What was Lee’s hypothesis?
Children from China would rate lie-telling in pro-social situations more positively than children from Canada.
What were the independent variables of the study?
- Nationality (Chinese or Canadian)
- Age (7, 9 or 11 years old)
- Behaviour of the child in the story (pro-social or anti-social)
- Whether the behaviour in the story affected other people (social story) or physical objects (physical story).
Describe Lee’s procedure?
Children were allocated on a random basis to either the social (affecting other children) story condition or the physical story condition (involved only physical objects).
They were seen individually.
First of all, the rating chart was explained to them.
When the children had to answer the questions, they could use the words, symbols, or sometimes both.
They questions asked included;
- Is what ___ did good or naughty
- Is what ___ said to their teacher good or naughty
Each child listened to all four social stories or all four physical stories.
The good and naughty meanings were alternated so that the researchers knew the child wasn’t just saying the first option each time.
The researchers also used counterbalancing by 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 second order.
What 4 stories did the children hear?
- Pro-social truth
- Pro-social lie
- Anti-social truth
- Anti-social lie
What two questions were the children always asked after listening to the stories?
- Is what ___ did good or naughty
- Is what ___ said to their teacher good or naughty
What sort of rating scale did Lee use?
A 7 point rating scale
very very good - neither - very very naughty
What is a pro-social truth telling?
Doing something that is perceived as good then letting people know you did it
What is a pro-social lie telling?
Doing something that is perceived as good but then denying you did it
What is a anti-social truth telling?
Doing something that is perceived as wrong but then owning up to what you did it
What is a anti-social lie telling?
Doing something that is perceived as wrong but then denying you did it
What were Lee’s findings?
Children in collectivist China came to view telling the truth about something pro-social they have done as LESS POSITIVE AS THEY GOT OLDER
No significant difference in how each culture rated the good deed (both positively).
8% of 7 Year Olds, 43% of 9 Year Olds and 48% of 11 year Olds gave negative ratings for telling the truth amongst the Chinese children.
All Canadian children rated lying as negative.
Chinese children rating lying as more positive as age increased
25% of 7 year olds, 43% of 9 year olds and 70% of Chinese 11 year olds rated lying as positive.
What was the major quantitative finding in Lee’s study?
70% of Chinese 11 year olds rated lying about a pro-social event positive
What was the major qualitative finding in Lee’s study?
One should never leave one’s name after doing a good deed
54% quoted this
What are two differences between Chinese and Canadian children in their results?
Chinese children rated lie telling negatively at age 7 but positively at age 11.
Chinese children rated lying as positive after committing a good deed (to hide their success)
What is a similarity between Chinese and Canadian children in their results?
Both Chinese and Canadian children rated lie telling negatively.
Explain why children are more likely to quote the phrase as they get older?
This comment is consistent with the Chinese cultural norms that are socialised into children through school, extra-curricular activities and the media.
The impact of this might get stronger over time as the older children were more likely to say that lying was positive compared to the younger children.
What conclusion did Lee come to?
Moral development is different in different cultures as a result of socio-cultural norms and practices
Evaluate the ethics of Lee’s study?
Parents and school provided informed consent
Some Canadian children withdrew
Protection from harm - had illustrations making them friendlier but could be upsetting to a 7 year old as they designed to be familiar situations
Confidentiality upheld
No deception and a debrief
Evaluate the reliability of Lee’s study?
Followed a standardised procedure as each child had the same 8 stories read to them = replicable
Reasonably large sample to suggest a consistent effect
Evaluate the validity of Lee’s study?
Risk of demand characteristics as all stories had same questions
Extraneous variables like age/participant variables were controlled
Stories were realistic but large amount of controls leads to low ecological validity
Evaluate the ethnocentrism of the study?
Not ethnocentric as examined different cultures - chinese + canadian and by conducting cross-cultural research, ethnocentrism was certainly minimised as we are not applying our own behaviours, standards and norms to other cultures without them being researched.
Canada is not representative of all western cultures
China is not representative of non-Western cultures.
Which side of the nature-nurture debate does this study relate to, and why?
Nurture - the way the Chinese Arte brought up leads them to behave I the way society wants them to behave
Nature - innate maturation of ages determined children’s answers
Which side of the freewill-determinism debate does this study relate, and why
Freewill - choice of answers caused their responses
Determined - children’s age + culture determined their responses
Why can this study be seen as an example of holism?
It used 4 different types of stories, as well as social/physical impacts, age and cultural influences
taking into account many different factors
Which two studies should you use to compare ‘moral development’?
Kohlberg
Lee
Give two similarity between Kohlberg and Lee’s study?
Both were cross-cultural
Both involved moral dilemmas/scenarios for children to comment on
Give two differences between Kohlberg and Lee’s study?
Kohlberg = Longitudinal; Andocentric bias - just males
Lee = Snapshot; gender split
How has Lee’s study changed our understanding about the core theme of ‘moral development’?
It has suggested that the Culture a child grows up in can have an effect on the development of their moral thinking
It isn’t talking about ‘levels’ or ‘stages’ of moral development
How hasn’t Lee’s study changed our understanding about the core theme of ‘moral development’?
Both find that children’s moral thinking changes as they grow OLDER.
It doesn’t find anything to challenge the idea of moral thinking developing in a sequence
How has/hasn’t Lee’s study changed our understanding of individual diversity?
Hasn’t
-Neither stay explores the reasons for any individual differences in moral thinking between children
How has/hasn’t Lee’s study changed our understanding of social diversity?
Has
- It has informed us of Girls and Boys moral thinking
- It has told us about younger children (7,9,11) not just 10-28
Hasn’t
- The age a child is at will influence the way that they think about issues of morality
How has/hasn’t Lee’s study changed our understanding of cultural diversity?
Has
- The culture a child grows up in Does affect their moral thinking
Hasn’t
- Canada was one of the countries data was collected from in both studies
What are the strengths of cross-sectional research?
Cross-sectional studies are usually relatively inexpensive
Allow researchers to collect a great deal of information quite quickly.
Researchers can collect data on some different variables to see how differences (e.g. age) might correlate with moral development
While cross-sectional studies cannot be used to determine causal (cause + effect) relationships that can provide a useful springboard to further research.
What are the weaknesses of cross-sectional research?>
While the design sounds relatively straightforward, finding participants who are very similar except in one specific variable can be difficult.
Cross-sectional studies generally require a large number of participants, so it is more likely that there will be small differences among participants. While such differences might seem minor, they can influence the study’s findings.
