Lee et al. (1997)

Chinese and Canadian Children’s Evaluations of Lying and Truth Telling: Similarities and Differences in the Context of Pro and Anti-Social Behaviours.

Background and aim: There has been limited research into children’s moral development of lying and the research that has been conducted has been done with children in Western countries. The aim of this study was to test the effect of culture on children’s moral evaluations of lying and truth telling by comparing the moral judgements of Canadian children and Chinese children.

Method: The participants in the study were 120 Chinese children, with an equal number of 7, 9 and 11 year olds; half were boys and half were girls. There were also 108 Canadian children, 36 of which were 7 years old, 40 were 9 years old and 32 were 11-year-olds. In total there were 58 Canadian boys and 50 Canadian girls. It was a laboratory experiment which used an independent measures design. The IVs were: 1. whether the participant heard the social story or the physical story, 2. whether the participant heard a pro-social or anti-social story, 3. the age of the children, 4. the ethnicity of the children. The DVs in the study were: 1. the rating given to the story character’s deed 2. the rating given to what the character said – both ratings ranged from very, very good to very, very naughty. Half of the Chinese children participated in the social story condition and the other half in the physical story condition. For the Canadian sample 19 7-year-olds, 20 9-year-olds and 17 11-year-olds were assigned to the social story condition and the others to the physical story condition. Allocation to the conditions was random.

Children were read four scenarios with illustrations: two were prosocial and two were antisocial. An example (a prosocial story with lie-telling is below):

Here is Alex. Alex’s class had to stay inside at recess time because of bad weather, so Alex decided to tidy up the classroom for his teacher.

Question 1: Is what Alex did good or naughty?

So Alex cleaned the classroom, and when the teacher returned after recess, she said to her students, “Oh, I see that someone has cleaned the classroom for me.” The teacher then asked Alex, “Do you know who cleaned the classroom?” Alex said to his teacher, “I did not do it.”

Question 2: Is what Alex did good or naughty?

Children were tested individually and the meaning of the words and the symbols were explained and were repeated every time a question was asked. 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 not naughty - blue circle), naughty - 1 black cross, very naughty -2 black crosses, very, very naughty -3 black crosses.

The story’s ‘deed’ section was read first and a rating was then given by the child, followed by the second part of the story. As a way of counterbalancing, the words good and naughty in the questions were alternated, as were the orders of the stories; this reduces order effects. At the end of the study participants were then involved in post-experimental discussions.

Results: Prosocial Behaviour/Truth-Telling Situations: Overall, children from both cultures rated the prosocial behaviours similarly. Canadian children at each age gave similar ratings to truth telling; however, Chinese children’s ratings became less positive as age increased.

Prosocial Behaviour/Lie-Telling Situations: Overall, Canadian children rated lie telling negatively, but as age increased their ratings became less negative. Overall, Chinese children’s ratings of lie telling changed from negative to positive as age increased.

Antisocial Behaviour/Truth-Telling Situations: Children from both cultures rated the antisocial behaviours similarly. Children from both cultures rated truth telling in this situation very positively

Antisocial Behaviour/Lie-Telling Situations: Both Chinese and Canadian children rated lie telling negatively in this condition. Overall, negative ratings increased with age, regardless of culture. Chinese 7-year-olds rated lie telling less negatively then older children in the physical story condition, while Canadian 7-year-olds rated lie telling less negatively than older children in the social story condition.

Conclusions: Lee et al. made the following conclusions about lying and truth telling: There is a close relationship between socio-cultural practices and moral judgements. Specific social and cultural norms have an impact on children’s developing moral judgements, which are modified by age and experience within a culture. Chinese children rate truth telling in prosocial situations less positively and lie telling in the same situations less negatively than Canadian children. All children showed similar moral evaluations of lie telling and truth telling related to anti-social behaviour. Moral development is affected by the culture and environment in which individuals are socialised. For example, Chinese children’s moral judgements are affected by self-effacement and modesty.

Evaluation

Ethnocentrism: By conducting cross-cultural research, ethnocentrism was certainly minimised as we are not applying our own behaviours, standards and norms to other cultures without them being researched. However, critics would argue that the research is culturally biased as Canada is not representative of all western cultures and China is not representative of non-Western cultures.

Reliability: The standardised procedure and scenarios make the study easy to replicate. Also, giving children four stories allowed Lee to see whether consistent responses are given in each of the different stories. If so results can be considered to be reliable.

Validity: Counterbalancing to reduce order effects, matching age and gender in the different groups and randomly allocating participants to groups were all techniques used to reduce confounding variables and therefore increase internal validity.

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