Chinese and Canadian Children's Evaluations of Lying and Truth Telling: Similarities and Dfferences in the Context of pro-and Antisocial Behaviors

The present study compared Chinese and Canadian children's moral evaluations of lie and truth telling in situations involving pro- and antisocial behaviors. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old Chinese and canadian children were presented 4 brief stories. Two stories involved a child who intentionally carried out a good deed, and the other2 stories involved a child who intentionally carried out a bad deed. When story characters were questioned by a teacher as to who had committed the deed, they either lied or told the truth. Children were asked to evaluate the story characters' deeds and their verbal statements. Overall, Chinese children rated truth telling less positively and lie telling more positively in prosocial settings than Canadian children, indicating that the emphasis on self-effacement and modesty in Chinese culture overrides Chinese children's evaluations of lying in some situations. Both Chinese and canadian children rated trugh telling positively and lie telling negatively in antisocial situations, reflecting the emphasis in both cultures on the distinction between misdeed and truth/lie telling. The findings of the present study suggest that, in the realm of lying and truth telling, a close relation between sociocultural practices and moral judgment exists. Specific social and cultural norms have an impact on children's developing moral judgments, which in turn, are modified by age and experience in a particular culture.     

The Self‐concept as a Moral Control

Abstract:

Groups of twenty children, aged between 6 years, 7 months and 11 years, 3 months, attending either a traditional Catholic school or a Freinet school were compared on judgments involving moral concepts. Subjects in the two groups were matched for age, IQ, sex, school grade, religious affiliation, fathers’ occupational level, number of siblings and birth order. Moral conflict stories differed in the presence or absence of authority figures and peers, and were set either in the home or the school. Children attending the Freinet school exhibited the more advanced moral judgments for all stories combined. Stories involving peers only elicited more mature judgments than those involving authority figures. Freinet schools encourage democratic group self‐discipline and provide many and varied role‐taking opportunities. The results suggest that such practices accelerate moral development.     

Order of information presentation and children's moral judgments.

It was hypothesized that age differences in use of intent information in children's moral judgments might be due to a recency effect in the judgments of younger children. A study was conducted to examine the effect of order of stimulus presentation on children's moral judgments. The information was presented to children, ages 4-5 and 8-9 years old, through stories with either normal information order, intent-consequence, or reversed order, consequence-intent. It was found that order has a significant impact on children's moral judgments. In addition, memory data were gathered which indicated that the pattern of forgetting was parallel to the pattern of information preference for the younger subjects. The findings suggested that younger subjects' relative neglect of intent in the normal order of information was based, in part, on their failure to remember the material correctly rather than on differential weighting of the 2 cues.     

Children's obligatory and discretionary moral judgments.

This study examined children's obligatory moral judgments (which reflect a moral requirement) and discretionary moral judgments (which reflect moral worthiness, but not a requirement). 72 children participated across grades 2, 5, and 8 (mean ages, 8-3, 11-0, and 13-11). Children were interviewed in response to stimulus stories that controlled for the degree of agent's cost (low and high) for performing positive moral acts (giving money for food to an impoverished, hungry person) and negative moral acts (not stealing money for food). Results showed that negative moral acts were more often conceived as obligatory than positive moral acts. In addition, the results support the proposition that children's concepts of obligation underlie judgments to codify law, that justice reasoning builds on concepts of welfare, and that with increasing age discretionary moral reasoning incorporates such character traits as benevolence, sacrifice, and supererogation. Discussion includes consideration of how the study's conceptualization and analysis can provide guidance to a moral-developmental research program.     

Counterfactual choices and moral judgments in children

When making moral judgments of past actions, adults often think counterfactually about what could have been done differently. Considerable evidence suggests that counterfactual thinking emerges around age 6, but it remains unknown how this development influences children's moral judgments. Across two studies, Australian children aged 4–9 (N = 236, 142 Females) were told stories about two characters who had a choice that led to a good or bad outcome, and two characters who had no choice over a good or bad outcome. Results showed that 4- and 5-year-olds’ moral judgments were influenced only by the actual outcome. From age 6, children's moral judgments were also influenced by the counterfactual choices that had been available to the characters.     

Children’s Beliefs About Possibility Differ Across Dreams,Stories, and Reality

Are children’s judgments about what can happen in dreams and stories constrained by their beliefs about reality? This question was explored across three experiments, in which four hundred and sixty-nine 4- to 7-year-olds judged whether improbable and impossible events could occur in a dream, a story, or reality. In Experiment 1, children judged events more possible in dreams than in reality. In Experiment 2, children also judged events more possible in dreams than in stories. Both experiments also suggested that children’s beliefs about reality constrain their judgments about dreams and stories. Finally, in Experiment 3 children were asked about impossible events more typical of dreams and stories. In contrast with the other experiments, children now affirmed the events could happen in these worlds.     

Children's distributive justice judgments: aversive racism in Euro-American children?

Euro-American 2nd- and 4th-grade children (Ms=7.67 and 9.82 years) heard stories about Black and White characters who produced artwork yielding a windfall reward. Children allocated rewards to characters, justified their allocations, and judged the fairness of patterns representing different justice principles. Older children allocated more money to Black than White productive characters and to White than Black needy characters, consistent with predictions from aversive racism theory. Rationales most often relied on equality principles; older children gave more equity-based justifications for Black than for White characters. Fairness ratings of patterns representing 4 justice principles revealed effects for age and character race. Implications for understanding the developmental course of moral judgments as they apply to racial differences are discussed.     

Personal responsibility antecedents of anger and blame reactions in children

The potential cognitive basis for anger in children was investigated by having 5-, 6-, 9-, 11-, and 15-year-old children offer moral evaluations and anger judgments about 8 incidents of property damage that differed in terms of the perpetrator's personal responsibility. Personal responsibility was manipulated by varying the events in terms of 3 dimensions: avoidability, intentionality, and motive acceptability. Results showed that these dimensions similarly affected children's moral- and anger-related judgments. Children's use of the personal responsibility dimensions was also associated with giving lower anger judgments, which suggests that anger instigation to property damage is moderated by the ability to take a normative perspective on transgressions.     

Following My Head and My Heart: Integrating Preschoolers' Empathy,Theory of Mind,and Moral Judgments

Associations among hypothetical, prototypic moral, and conventional judgments; theory of mind (ToM); empathy; and personal distress were examined in 108 socioeconomically diverse preschoolers (M_age = 42.94 months, SD = 1.42). Repeated measures analysis of covariance with empathy, false beliefs, and their interaction as covariates indicated that empathy was significantly associated with judgments of greater moral but not conventional transgression severity, particularly for psychological harm, and with deserved punishment for unfairness. False beliefs were associated with (combined) moral criterion judgments of rule and authority independence and inalterability. Empathy also was positively associated with criterion judgments but only for children low in ToM. Personal distress was unrelated to judgments. Results demonstrate the importance of both affective and cognitive processes in preschoolers' moral judgments.     

Exploring the use of Web 2.0 technology to promote moral and psychosocial development: Can YouTube work?

This paper explores the use of the video sharing site, YouTube, as a platform for enhancing moral and psychosocial development through increased awareness of moral values and models of moral behavior. The research involved a qualitative design whereby video snippets illustrating moral issues were identified from YouTube. These video snippets were analyzed in terms of their viewership, the moral dilemma and the levels of moral judgment that they presented. The comments made by viewers in response to the video contents were then captured and their contents analyzed for evidence of moral reasoning and ego (psychosocial) development. The findings showed that the video sharing websites such as YouTube offered opportunities for moral issues to be featured, shared and discussed at a global level, as well as moral judgments and ego development to be made evident through viewers' comments. From an educational viewpoint, it also paves the way for the use of appropriate video footage for promoting moral values and moral development.     

Conceptions of moral,social-conventional,and personal events among Chinese preschoolers in Hong Kong

Sixty-one Chinese preschoolers from Hong Kong at 2 ages (Ms = 4.36 and 6.00 years) were interviewed about familiar moral, social-conventional, and personal events. Children treated personal events as distinct from moral obligations and conventional regulations. Children judged the child as deciding personal issues, based on personal choice justifications, whereas children judged parents as deciding moral and conventional issues. With age, children granted increased decision-making power to the child. In contrast, children viewed moral transgressions as more serious, generalizably wrong, and wrong independent of authority than other events, based on welfare and fairness. Punishment-avoidance justifications for conventional events decreased with age, whereas conventional justifications increased. Young Chinese preschool children make increasingly differentiated judgments about their social world.     

Children's social reasoning about inclusion and exclusion in gender and race peer group contexts

This study investigated whether children's and adolescents' judgments about exclusion of peers from peer group activities on the basis of their gender and race would differ by both age level and the context in which the exclusion occurred. Individual interviews about exclusion in several different contexts were conducted with 130 middle-class, European American children and adolescents. Younger children were expected to reject exclusion, by using judgments based on moral reasoning, regardless of the potential cost to group functioning, whereas older children were expected to condone exclusion on the basis of group membership in cases in which the inclusion of these children might interrupt effective group functioning. On measures of judgments, justifications for those judgments, and ratings of the appropriateness of exclusion, the vast majority of children used moral reasoning and rejected exclusion in contexts in which only the presence of a stereotype justified it. As expected, however, older children (13 years) were more likely to allow exclusion than younger children (7 and 10 years) when group functioning was threatened, and they justified this exclusion by using appeals to effective group functioning.     

Moral Rules, Utilitarianism and Schizophrenic Moral Education

R. M. Hare has argued for and defended a ‘two-level’, view of moral agency. He argues that moral agents ought to rely on the rules of ‘intuitive moral thinking’ for their ‘everyday’ moral judgments. When these rules conflict or when we do not have a rule at hand, we ought to ascend to the act-utilitarian,‘critical’ level of moral thinking. I argue that since the rules at the intuitive level of moral thinking necessarily conflict much more often than Hare supposes, and since we often do not have ready-made rules for our moral judgments, we must necessarily use critical moral thinking very frequently. However, act-utilitarian judgements at this level will sharply conflict with our strongly held ‘intuitive’ moral convictions. I show that Hare's attempt to balance these two aspects of moral judgment requires us to simultaneously adopt two conflicting sets of moral standards, and thus an attempt to inculcate such standards constitutes a ‘schizophrenic’ moral education. Finally, I briefly outline an alternative conception of moral education, based on Aristotelian phronesis.     

Piaget,Moral Development and the Curriculum

Abstract

In The Moral Development of the Child Piaget proposes a sketch of a developmental account of moral judgments, and the sequence of stages which he there proposes have been widely taken to provide a basis for any adequate developmental account. However, if Piaget's work on cognitive development is taken as providing a standard by which to judge such theories it is doubtful that moral development can be accounted for through the use of the equilibrium concept. The very notion of ‘a moral judgment’ with which Piaget works imposes severe restrictions on the adequacy of the theory, leading him necessarily to ignore important issues. Furthermore, there seems to be no underpinning available to secure the necessary order of the stages, and as a matter of fact some children seem to show evidence of a capacity to make advanced moral judgments at an early age. It is argued, therefore, that the search for developmental structures of this kind should be abandoned.     

Judging plagiarism: a problem of morality and convention

This paper considers the problem of plagiarism as an issue of morality. Outrage about student plagiarism in universities positions it as dishonesty and a transgression of standards. Despite this, there has been little work analysing the implications of positioning plagiarism as a moral matter in the making of judgments about plagiarism and academic dishonesty. This paper sets the scene by reviewing research about the characteristics of students who cheat and analysing student and lecturer differences. It then discusses perspectives from moral behaviour, moral philosophy and moral reasoning. The paper concludes that emotion and reason are brought to moral judgments, and so makes a case for those who are making judgments about plagiarism to reflect on whether they are faced with a matter of morality or convention. Greater awareness of the domains of convention and morality, the issues of justice and care, the roles of emotion and reason and what is involved in making judgments, will open ways of understanding reactions to plagiarism so that better ways to deal with accusations and make judgments can be developed.     

Mothers' and Children's Conceptualizations of Corporal Punishment

Preschool ( M age = 4–11) and fifth-grade ( M age = 12–1) children and their mothers judged the acceptability of corporal punishment as a function of the type of transgression (dangerous, violation of social rule, or violation of moral precept) and discipline agent. Children of both ages and their mothers discriminated among different types of transgressions as a function of rule contingency, rule generalizability, and seriousness of the transgression. Social convention transgressions were judged to be more rule contingent, less generalizable (across settings), and less serious than prudential (dangerous) or moral violations, but overall children judged transgressions to be more generalizable than did their mothers. Preschool children showed broad acceptability for severe corporal punishment given any type of transgression, by any agent, whereas fifth graders were generally discriminating about limits of punishability, and their judgments appeared to be transitional between the broad acceptance shown by younger children and more focused acceptability shown by mothers. Mothers were proprietary with respect to agent and tended to focus on dangerous and moral violations as punishable. Findings suggest a developmental path from a single criterion for young children to consideration of multiple criteria for older children and adults. Judgments were also interpreted as reflecting social roles such as parents' responsibility to constrain children and children's expectations for constraint. Preschool children's broad acceptability of punishment despite their differentiation of classes of rules and of transgressions suggests that different constraints operate for judgments about rules or commands as opposed to sanctions. Implications for children's ability to identify and report abuse are also noted.     

he Effects of Transgressors’ Affective Reactions on Children's Moral Judgments

Abstract

The present study investigated the degree to which transgressors’ affective reactions influence children's moral judgments. Eighteen children at each of three different grade levels (first‐, second‐, and third‐grade) were required to make judgments of the goodness or badness of four different transgressors.The transgressors acted out of good or bad intent, produced low or high levels of damage and displayed the affective reactions of happiness, sadness or neutrality because of the outcomes they produced.

Results showed that the transgressors’ affective reactions significantly influenced the children's moral judgments. More importantly, the children excluded intention information when they evaluated transgressors who displayed reactions of happiness. But, they did not exclude intentions when they evaluated transgressors who displayed reactions of sadness or neutrality. A number of hypotheses were offered to account for the means by which reactions of happiness block children's use of intent information.     

Bullying and repeated conventional transgressions in Swedish schools: How do gender and bullying roles affect students’ conceptions?

Bullying is a moral transgression. Recognizing the importance of approaching bullying from a moral perspective, the present study examines whether children's judgments and reasoning to justify their judgments differ between bullying and repeated conventional transgressions. Our study also explores differences by gender and differences among bullies, victims, and uninvolved students. Participants included 381 students from 13 elementary schools in Sweden. Findings indicate that children judge bullying as more wrong than repeated conventional transgressions; use moral reasons more frequently in their justifications about bullying than about repeated conventional transgressions; and use conventional reasons more frequently to justify their judgments on repeated conventional transgressions as compared with bullying. Female students and nonbullies judged bullying and repeated conventional transgressions as more wrong and used moral reasons more frequently in their justifications of judgments of bullying than did male students and bullies. Male students reported bullying more than did female students. Implications for practice are also discussed.     

Same beginnings, different stories: a comparison of American and Chinese children's narratives

This study examined social, emotional, and cognitive characteristics of American and Chinese children's narratives. Twenty-four American and 26 Chinese 6-year-old children participated. Each child was interviewed individually twice with a 1-week delay interval. During the two interviews, children were asked to tell 11 stories prompted by pictures and standard verbal leads and to recount 7 emotional memories. Content analyses were performed on children's stories and memories. In line with predictions, findings indicated that compared with American children, Chinese children showed greater orientation toward social engagement, greater concern with moral correctness, greater concern with authority, a less autonomous orientation, more expressions of emotions, and more situational details in both their stories and memories. A few gender differences were found. Findings are discussed in terms of different value systems and early socialization practices in these two cultures.     

Does Reading Moral Stories Build Character?

The assumption of traditional character educators that children build moral literacy from reading or hearing moral stories is challenged based on research findings. First, research in text comprehension indicates that readers do not understand texts the same way due to differences in reading skill and background knowledge. Second, moral comprehension research indicates that moral arguments are understood differently based on differences in moral schema development. Third, moral texts (e.g., that contain embedded moral reasoning) are understood and distorted differently by readers with different moral schemas. Fourth, children do not extract moral story themes as intended by the writer.