An international team of researchers will collaborate to investigate how North American and Eastern Asian children acquire the concepts of lying and the associated moral values. In contrast to most studies that mainly involve Western children, our experimental strategy is to sample school-aged children from US, Canada, P.R. China, and Japan. This comparative approach allows us to identify cross-cultural similarities and differences in children's moral understanding of dishonesty, and to determine the extent to which such understanding is shaped by children's unique cultural experiences. We will test a basic hypothesis that because the North American and Eastern Asian cultures emphasize differentially individualism and collectivism, children's moral conception of honesty and dishonesty will be different in these cultures. Three experimental series will systematically examine whether North American and East Asian children categorize untruthful statements as lies and give positive or negative ratings to them when the statements are told (a) to be modest, (b) to be polite, or (c) to benefit another individual or a collective. A fourth experimental series will compare the moral conceptions of lying and truth-telling in East Asian children born and raised in North America, East Asian children raised in East Asia, and Non-East Asian children raised in North America. This comparison examines the relative influence of the macro (school) - and micro- (home) cultural environments on children's moral conceptions of lying. The theoretical significance of our project is to provide a cross-cultural perspective on current research regarding the development of truth- and lie-telling, to delineate cultural factors contributing to the formation of moral values in the domain of verbal communication, and ultimately to form an integrated, cross-cultural account of the development of honesty and dishonesty in children. Practically, knowledge about the normal development of children's moral conceptions of lying can provide mental health professionals with useful information for assessing and treating atypical children from different cultural backgrounds who have conduct disorders, of which dishonesty is one major symptom. Also, this research will offer educators much needed information regarding culturally sensitive strategies to teach children about honesty and lying. In the legal domain, our findings can assist legal practitioners in developing culturally sensitive procedures to assess child witnesses' competence and credibility in courts of law. ? ?
| Yi, Li; Quinn, Paul C; Feng, Cong et al. (2015) Do individuals with autism spectrum disorder process own- and other-race faces differently? Vision Res 107:124-32 |
| Yi, Li; Feng, Cong; Quinn, Paul C et al. (2014) Do individuals with and without autism spectrum disorder scan faces differently? A new multi-method look at an existing controversy. Autism Res 7:72-83 |
| Evans, Angela D; Lee, Kang (2013) Emergence of lying in very young children. Dev Psychol 49:1958-63 |
| Heather Fritzley, V; Lindsay, Rod C L; Lee, Kang (2013) Young children's response tendencies toward yes-no questions concerning actions. Child Dev 84:711-25 |
| Cluver, Annette; Heyman, Gail; Carver, Leslie J (2013) Young children selectively seek help when solving problems. J Exp Child Psychol 115:570-8 |
| Heyman, Gail D; Hsu, Anna S; Fu, Genyue et al. (2013) Instrumental lying by parents in the US and China. Int J Psychol 48:1176-84 |
| Heyman, Gail D; Sritanyaratana, Lalida; Vanderbilt, Kimberly E (2013) Young children's trust in overtly misleading advice. Cogn Sci 37:646-67 |
| Cameron, Catherine Ann; Lau, Cindy; Fu, Genyue et al. (2012) Development of children's moral evaluations of modesty and self-promotion in diverse cultural settings. J Moral Educ 41:61-78 |
| Evans, Angela D; Brunet, Megan K; Talwar, Victoria et al. (2012) The Effects of Repetition on Children's True and False Reports. Psychiatr Psychol Law 19: |
| Loke, Ivy Chiu; Heyman, Gail D; Forgie, Julia et al. (2011) Children's moral evaluations of reporting the transgressions of peers: age differences in evaluations of tattling. Dev Psychol 47:1757-62 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 47 publications
