| Background and aim | - Testing the effects of culture on children’s moral evaluations of lying and truth telling
- Comparing the moral judgements of Canadian + Chinese children
- Slight alternative to Kohlberg's stage theory |
| Sample | - 120 Chinese children, equal gender split
- 108 Canadian children, 58 boys, 50 girls
- All 7-11 years old |
| Type of method and design Lee used | - Laboratory + quasi experiment and independent measures design |
| The Independent variables | - Whether the participant heard the social or physical story
- Whether the participant heard a pro-social or anti-social story
- The age + ethnicity of the children |
| The dependent variables | - The rating given to the character’s deed
- The rating given to what the character said |
| Data | - Quantitive data |
| Procedure | - Children randomly allocated to either the social or physical condition
- Seen individually
- Rating scale was explained to them
- Each child listened to all four social or physical stories
- Asked to rate their behaviour |
| Ratings of the deeds and verbal statements were on a 7-point rating chart | - Very, very good 3 red stars
- Very good 2 red stars
- Good 1 red star
- Neither good nor naughty blue circle
- Naughty 1 black cross
- Very naughty 2 black crosses
- Very, very naughty 3 black crosses |
| Pro-social Truth-telling | - Doing a good deed and admitting to doing it |
| Pro-social Lie-telling | - Doing a good deed but saying that they didn't do it |
| Anti-social Truth-telling | - Doing a bad deed but admitting to doing it |
| Anti-social Lie-telling | - Doing a bad deed and lying about doing it |
| Results: Pro-social Truth-Telling Situations | - Children from both cultures rated the prosocial behaviours similarly
- Canadian children at each age gave similar ratings to truth telling
- Chinese children’s ratings became less positive as age increased |
| Results: Pro-social Lie-Telling Situations | - Children from both cultures rated lie telling in prosocial situations negatively, but as age increased their ratings became less negative |
| Results: Anti-social Truth-Telling Situations | - Children from both cultures rated the antisocial truth-telling situations similarly + very positively |
| Results: Anti-social Lie-Telling Situations | - Children from both cultures rated lie telling in antisocial situations negatively
- Negative ratings increased with age |
| Conclusions | - All children showed similar evaluations
- Moral development is affected by the culture
- Chinese children rated truth telling in prosocial situations less positively + lie-telling less negatively than Canadian children |
| Ethnocentrism | - Cross-cultural study
- Ethnocentric bias as Canada is not representative of all western cultures and China is not representative of non-Western cultures |
| Reliability | - Standardised - replicable
- Giving children four stories allowed Lee to see whether consistent responses are given
- If so results can be considered to be reliable |
| Validity | High validity due to:
- Counterbalancing to reduce order effects
- Matching age and gender and randomly allocating participants to groups |
| Ethical guidelines upheld | - Consent given by parents
- Right to withdraw
- Protection from harm |
| Freewill vs determinism (Determinism) | - Stages of moral development are invariant + universal |
| Free will vs determinism (Freewill) | - However we do have the freewill to over-ride our morality and do things that are immoral |
| Link to reductionism/holism | - Takes a holistic approach by acknowledging the influence of society on our behaviour and the social cognitions that develop as a result of this |
| Two types of cultures | - Individualistic
- Collective |
| Individualistic cultures | - Societies which emphasise the individual, their rights, attitudes and needs |
| Collectivist cultures | - Societies which emphasise the group, its decisions and needs and the duties of the individual to that group |
| How does the contemporary study of improve our understanding of the key theme? | - L disagrees with K stages of moral development
- Shows cultural differences change the context of the thinking + fundamental moral rules
- e.g. ‘you must not tell lies’ becomes ‘you should tell lies in certain circumstances’ in some cultures
- Said not just down to culture but individual, depends on how you go through the stages of development |
| How does the contemporary study improve our understanding of individual, social and cultural diversity? INDIVIDUAL DIVERSITY | - L able to study females + males, explains how both genders develop morally, based on cultural factors
- Improvement to the classic study as Kohlberg only studied males |
| How does the contemporary study improve our understanding of individual, social and cultural diversity? CULTURAL DIVERSITY | - L reinforced Ks idea that morality is developed over time
- As they found both Canadian + Chinese children shifted their attitudes to truth-telling as they got older
- L showed moral dev. not purely down to age + progression, also due to cultural factors |
