Lee

• Previous research by Piaget suggests that children's moral judgement about lying and truth telling rely on whether the lie is punished. He suggests that children do not begin to use the protagonist's intention as the key factor of moral judgement until age 11.
• Research by Wimmer disagreed with Piaget's claim and suggested that preschool children are capable of distinguishing lying from misdeeds.
• Sweetser argued that the understanding of lying is greatly influenced by the cultural norms and social values the child was socialised with. However all of the research was conducted on western children.
• This inspired Lee to bridge the gap between previous research by directly testing the effect of culture on children's evaluation of lying and truth telling.
• Lee aimed to investigate cross-cultural differences in children's understanding and moral evaluations of lying by comparing the responses of Canadian and Chinese participants to stories that involved lying and truth telling in prosocial and antisocial situations.
• He studied 120 Chinese children and 108 Canadian children. They were all aged 7, 9, or 11.
• Procedure part 1:

  • Chinese and Canadian children were randomly assigned to social or physical stories,
  • Children read 4 scenarios individually (either 4 physical or 4 social),
  • The had the 7 point rating scale of how to judge the behaviour explained to them,
  • A characters deed was first read to the children (the information about the characters anti or pro social behaviour),
  • Children then had to give their rating on the 7 point scale,
• Procedure part 2:

  • The children were then read the second section of the story where the character either lied or told the truth,
  • The children then had to again rate the morality of what the character did this happened by asking if what the character did was good or naughty and the order of these words was alternated.
• Findings:

  • Children from both cultures rated the antisocial behaviours similarly, telling the truth is positive and lying is negative,
  • Canadian children rated prosocial lie telling negatively, whereas Chinese children rated prosocial lie telling positively,
  • Chinese children's ratings of prosocial lie telling changed from negative to positive as they aged but the rating in Canadian children went from negative to more negative.
• Lee concluded that moral reasoning can be influenced by culture and society that we live in this is emphasised as we age, also the emphasis on modesty/humility in Chinese children increases with age as the moral standards become more imbedded.