Lee Et Al

• Aim

  • To investigate cross - cultural differences in children's understanding and moral valuations of lying
  • The study aimed to compare the responses of Chinese and Canadian children to stories that involved lying and truth-telling in prosocial and antisocial situations
• Method

  • cross cultural study
  • cross sectional design - snapshot - researchers conducted the test on children of different age groups and compared the results
• Design

  Laboratory experiment that sued an independent measures design

  4 IVs :

  1. whether the participant heard the social story or physical story
  2. whether they had a prosocial or antisocial story
  3. The age of the children - 7 9 or 11
  4. ethnicity - Chinese or Canadian

  DVS :

  1. rating given to story characters deed
  2. rating given to what the character said

  Both dvs measured on a seven point scale from very very good to very very naughty.
• Participants

  • 120 Chinese children
  • 108 Canadian children

  Chinese children recruited from elementary schools from a medium sized city in Zhejiang Province. Canadian children recruited form elementary school in New Brunswick
• Procedure - 1

  For each cultural group, half of the participants were randomly assigned to either a social or physical story

  THE SOCIAL STORY

  • Involved the deed of the main character directly affecting another child ( either someone getting hurt or helped )

  THE PHYSICAL STORY

  • the deed of the main character only involved physical objects
• Procedure 2

  1. Each child tested individually
  2. They were read aloud 4 different stories in a pre arranged randomised order, written to be familiar to both cultures. 2 pro social stories that involved a child intentionally carrying out a good deed, 2 antisocial stories that involved a child intentionally carrying out a bad deed. In all stories, when asked about their actions the child either tells the truth or lies.
  3. Heard the stories as follows - prosocial/lying , prosocial/ truth telling , antisocial/lying , antisocial / truth telling
• Procedure 3

  • Deed section of the story read aloud then they were asked ' is what the child did naughty or good?' and they rated it on the rating chart
  • Then the second part was told when they either lied or told the truth and they were asked ' Is what the child said to his teacher naughty or good? ' they again indicated their answer
• Results

  • Rating of the deeds in the stories have been.used as a control to check that the children understood the stories and actually rated them correctly
  • Order of the stories and gender of children had no significant differences
  • No significant differences between Canadian and Chinese children.
  • Significant interaction between age and culture, Canadian children in general rated lie telling in pro social negatively, whereas chines children ratings raged from negative to positive with age. In anti social, all children rated lie telling negatively and these ratings increased with age
• Discussion

  Cultural similarities - number of similarities between the 2 groups, similar negative ratings lie telling in antisocial and positive ratings of truth telling in antisocial.

  Children from both cultures could distinguish between deeds and verbal statements as moral evaluation of each was different.
• Discussion

  Cultural differences - In pro-social situations Chinese children rated truth - telling less positively and lie telling more positively than Canadians. Cultural distinctions became more obvious as they got older, children increasingly raying lying more positively in pro social. eg. 70% of Chinese 11 yr olds compared to 25% of 7 year olds. Similarly Chinese children gave increasingly negative ratings in pro social truth telling situations when asked why they said 'you shouldn't leave your name when you do a good deed,' those who did were begging for or wanted praise.
• Conclusions

  1. Moral reasoning can be influenced by our culture and the society in which we live
  2. Specific social and cultural norms have an impact on children's developing moral judgement, which are modified by age and experience within a culture
  3. Some aspects of moral reasoning, such judging antisocial lying as bad, may be universal
• Strengths

  • cross cultural study - difference and similarities that were found point to a combination off universal and culturally specific causes. Lee also tried to make measures appropriate and similar for both cultures.
  • collection of mainly quantitative data through 7 point scale, allowed rating to be converted into numerical form and analysed easily
  • materials used to measure moral judgement or lying and truth telling were the same across all participants - replicable
  • stories designed to be easy to understand and they would have been familiar with the scenarios - improves validity
• Limitations

  • IV of cultures was not manipulated by the researcher - quasi experiment - we cannot conclude that culture caused the differences in responses
  • Questionable ecological validity as main task of judging characters behaviour in a story is quite different to forming moral judgement in real life