To test the effect of culture on children’s moral evaluations of lying and truth telling by comparing the moral judgements of Canadian and Chinese children.
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What was the type of study?
Lab experiment, independent measures
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What were the IVs?
1. Social or physical story 2. Pro-social (good deed) or antisocial (bad deed) story
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What were the 4 conditions?
Pro-social behaviour/Truth-telling, Pro-social behaviour/Lie-telling, Antisocial behavior/ Truth-telling and Antisocial behaviour/Lie-telling
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What were the DVs?
1. The rating given to what the child had done 2. The rating given to what the child had said
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Why does the study have a repeated measure design element?
The ppts were read 2 pro-social and 2 antisocial stories
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Who were the Chinese sample?
120 children: 40 7,9 and 11 yr olds (equal gender split). From elementary schools from a medium provincial capital city (Hangzhou)
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Who were the Canadian sample?
108 children: 36 7 yr olds, 40 9 yr olds and 32 11 yr olds. Middle-class families, elementary school in a smaller provincial capital city (Fredericton)
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How were the children split?
Randomly assigned to social or physical story. 1/2 of the Chinese and roughly half of the Canadian
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What was the rating scale used?
7 point. 3 red stars=very,very good. Blue circle=Neither. 3 black crosses=very,very naughty. The scale was explained to the children after each question asked.
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What was the procedure?
The ppts were read 4 scenarios with illustrations and were each tested individually. They rated the child's deed and then rated what the child said. The words 'good' and 'naughty' were altered within subjects. There was post-experimental discussions
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How were order effects controlled?
Half the ppts in each condition were read the stories in one predetermined order and the other half in the other order
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What were the findings from the pro-social/truth-telling condition?
Children of both cultures rated the behaviour similarly. Canadian children gave similar ratings at each age but Chinese children's ratings became less positive as age increased.
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What were the findings from the pro-social/lie-telling condition?
Significant differences with age and culture. CAN: Lie telling was very negatively rated but as age increased the ratings became less negative. PRC: Lie telling changed from negative to positive as age increased
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What were the findings from the antisocial/truth telling condition?
Children from both cultures rated the antisocial behaviour similarly and the truth telling positively
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What were the findings from the anti-social/lie telling condition?
Both cultures rated lie telling negatively. As age increased, negative ratings increased. PRC 7 yr olds: lie telling less negatively than the older children in the physical. CAN 7 yr olds: lie telling less negatively than old children in social
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What is the key theme of the study?
Moral development
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What debates relate to this study?
Nurture/Situational (cultural differences), determinism (culture), free will (able to over-ride our morality), holistic (influence of society and cognitive processes)
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