东西方儿童对友谊关系中的道德推理发展的跨文化研究

A CROSS CULTURAL STUDY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL REASONING IN FRIENDSHIP IN WESTERN AND EASTERN CHILDREN AND ADOLECENTS

该研究以友谊许诺为主题的两难故事分别对冰岛 (雷克雅未克市 )和中国 (北京市 ) 7～ 15岁的儿童做个别访谈 ,比较研究了东西方文化儿童在友谊矛盾冲突情景中是如何做出行动决定选择和道德评价的。研究结果揭示了不同文化及与年龄相联系的社会认知能力对有关发展的影响。

The purpose of the study was to investigate how children in Western and Eastern culture develop the understanding of friendship. Both 80 Icelandic and Chinese subjects were interviewed at ages of 7, 9, 12 and 15. They were presented with an interpersonal-moral conflict in which the protagonist had to decide whether she or he kept a promise to the best friend or accepted an interesting invitation from a third child. A categorical manual for scoring the content of socio-moral reasoning was developed. According to the manual the reasons for action choices as well as reasons for the moral judgments of these choices were analyzed. The results showed that the conflicts were interpreted differently in both cultures. For the Icelandic children promise keeping in close friendship conflicts with egoistic interests, however, the Chinese children interpreted the situation as a conflict between an old friendship and interpersonal responsibility toward the new child. The results also showed that at ago of 15, there were no more cultural differences in the use of the reasoning categories. It seems to be universal trend that adolescence is a period where close friendship is extremely important.