Lee

Lee

1. Aim

   • To see if Chinese and Canadian children would rate truth-telling and lie-telling differently in pro-social or anti-social settings, where someone has done something good or bad, would be percieved the same in both cultures

2. Sample

   • 120 Chinese children
     • 40 7 year olds
     • 40 9 year olds
     • 40 11 year olds
   • 108 Canadian children
     • 36 7 year olds
     • 40 9 year olds
     • 32 11 year olds

3. Conditions

   • Ethnicity of child
   • Child's age
   • social or physical story
   • pro-social or anti-social setting

4. Materials

   • Four types of stories
     • Pro-social setting, truth telling
     • Pro-social setting, lie telling
     • Anti-social setting, truth telling
     • Anti-social setting, lie telling
     • All physical and social stories
       • Children are first asked if the act is good, or naughty.
         • Then asked the same after a lie/ truth is told

5. Method

   • Children were randomly allocated to a social or physical story
   • Children were taught about a chart that ranged from "very very good" to "very very naughty"
   • Children listen to all four social/physical stories
     • Researchers prevented order effects by alternating orders of answers

6. Results

   • No significant difference in the order stories were given / gender of child
   • For the first question, every good deed had a positive score, and every negative deed had a negative score, regardless of ethnicity of child
   • Ratings of the truth-telling and lie-telling as good or bad showed differences in different cultures
     • Older Chinese children viewed lie-telling as a positive light, and gave it a higher raing than truth-telling in good deed situations
     • Canadian children disapproved every lie-telling incident
     • Both ethnicities approved of truth telling
     • No significant difference in the rating of pro-social behaviours
     • Canadian children rated lie-telling less negatively as they got older
     • When asked abou their ratings, Chinese children said you shouldn't ask for praise, and that was what the child in the story was doing
   • Canadian children gave similar ratings of truth telling at each age, Chinese children rated it less positively as they got older.

7. Conclusions

   • Moral development is different in differnet cultures as a result of socio-cultural norms, not only as a result of cognitive deleopment