LEE ET AL

LEE ET AL

1. Aims

   • to see how Chinese and Canadian children would differ in how they rated truth-telling and lie-telling in pro-social settings. Chinese children were predicted to rate truth telling in pro-social situations less positively and lie telling in the same situation less negatively than canadian children
   • to see how Chinese and Canadian children would differ in how they rated truth-telling and lie-telling in anti-social settings. children from both cultures were expected to show similar moral evaluations of lie telling in and truth telling related to anti-social behaviour

2. Back ground

   • Sweetser, concept of lying is influenced by cultural norms and values
     • "The present study was conducted to bridge the gap in the literature by directly testing the posited effect of culture on children's moral evaluation of lying and truth-telling "

3. Sample

   • China
     • Age 7: males 20 females 20
     • Age 9: males 20 females 20
     • Age 11: males 20 females 20
   • Canada
     • Age 7: males 20 females 16
     • age 9: males 24 females 16
     • Age 11: males 14 females 18

4. procedure

   • *children were allocated on a random basis to either the social story condition or the physical story condition. *They were seen individually. *First of all, the rating chart was explained to them. *when the children had to answer questions, they could use the words, symbols or sometimes both. *Each child listened to all four social physical stories. *The good and naughty meanings were alrenated so that the researchers knew the child wasnt just saying the first option each time . *the researches also used counter balancing by randomly allocating stories to one of two orders and then giving half of the children one order and the rest of the children the second order

5. Materials

   • story 1: pro-social behaviour - truth telling. story 2: pro-social behaviour - lie telling, story 3: Anti-social behaviour - truth telling. story 4: Anti-social behaviour - lie telling

6. Results

   • story 1: Chinese children though it was more negative as they got older to tell the truth about doing a good deed. Canadian children always thought it was good to tell the truth
   • Story 2: Canadian children rated lie telling negatively at all ages but less negatively as they aged, Chinese children rated negatively as 7 but positively by 11
   • Story 3: All said its good to own up to a bad deed, as they aged lying became more negative
   • Story 4: Negative rating for lying increased in both cultures as they aged

7. Conclusions

   • Concluded that there are differences in moral development between different cultures, which is not due to just cognitive development

8. Ethics

   • All ethics were upheld other than that many of the children were not old enough to make decisions by themselves

9. Reliability and Validity

   • Internal reliability
     • High, had controls, such as being asked questions individually so as not to affect others answers
   • External reliability
     • fairly large sample from each country
   • internal valilidty
     • children say what they have been taught is right by adults. By the forth story they might see the aim of the study
     • Could have been measuring how well the children were raised by their parents
   • External Validity
     • All story's are likely to happen in real life
   • Ethnocentrism
     • Applicable to more than one culture, one is collectivist and the other is individualist. only two countries may not represent all eastern and western cultures

10. The developmental area

    • studies children across different cultures. Investigated how idea of morality changes as we get older and whether it is affected by the culture we grow up in

11. Moral development

    • Shows age related changes to how they react to moral issues. investigated the impact of both age and culture on out judgement about whether lying and telling the truth are right or wrong

12. Links to debate

    • Nurture - different cultural upbringings have and effect
    • individual/situational- as people from the same culture react the same way but those from a different culture react differently
    • Reductionism / Holism- saying that they were only measuring moral development due to both cognitive development and culture
    • Determinsm - determined by culture you grow up in