Can culture shape moral identity? A comparative study of children’s moral identity in China and England

Abstract

This PhD thesis presents a general picture of young adolescents’ moral views and behaviour in two countries. The study also examines the assumption that culture plays a role in forming young people’s moral views and moral behaviour and the implications for moral education and moral evaluation.

The study is a large-scale cross-sectional comparison between primary school children in China and England. The sample consists of 1,950 primary school students between 8 and 13 years old (average age=10.2, standard deviation=0.9). The 1,768 Chinese participants are from eight public schools in the capital city (Beijing) and three smaller cities in China. 107 British participants are from two similar state-funded schools in northeast England (Durham and Newcastle), and 75 were recruited online from various cities across England (e.g. London, Newcastle, Durham and Edinburgh). The British sample is smaller than expected because of COVID-19.

All the participants took part in a questionnaire survey. A subset of 278 randomly selected participants joined in a game observation operationalising some of the moral issues in the survey.

The questionnaire survey mainly concerned children’s self-reported moral identity (the self-reported importance of the moral values of fairness, kindness/not hurting and honesty) and their intended behaviour in response to these moral values. The second research tool in the study was a game-based activity to observe actual behaviour. A sub-group of the survey sample participated in the game and they were requested to act independently on charity donation and distribution tasks. Their survey responses on their moral identity, intentions and motivations were then compared with their actual behavioural responses in the game. Consistency between students’ behavioural intentions in the survey and their actual behaviour in the game was evaluated.

The main findings of the study are the following:
(1) There is a gap between young adolescents’ moral values, value commitments (intentions)
and actual moral behaviour.
(2) Young adolescents have a similar self-reported importance of moral identity and moral
trait understanding to adults.
(3) Young adolescents from both countries reported a relatively solid moral identity and
showed similar behaviour patterns (to be generous or fair in different situations). They also considerably overlap in their understanding of important moral traits. However, the Chinese adolescents generally achieved a higher mean score for reported moral identity and demonstrated stronger consistency of behaviour than the British adolescents.
(4) There were some indications that cultural similarities and differences exist between China
and England from the young adolescents’ perspectives. The cultural difference in individualism between China and England is not as big as the difference in collectivism.
(5) It was found that personal values and nationality predict moral identity and behaviour to
different degrees. Moral identity and behaviour intention are predicted by both personal values and nationality. Actual moral behaviour is only predicted by nationality. Consistency of moral behaviour is only predicted by personal values. Norm priming (e.g. being told what most peers do) is related to actual moral behaviour but not to consistency of behaviour.
(6) Student socioeconomic background is related to moral identity and moral behaviour.
(7) The study not only linked moral identity to actual moral behaviour but also to consistency
of behaviour. It revealed that cultural and socioeconomic differences should be considered when exploring whether moral identity predicts moral behaviour. This is ignored in some existing research in this field, producing potentially misleading results.
(8) Generally, the study implied that moral education and moral evaluation need to be more practical and fairer, and consider moral dilemmas (value clashes) in real life, potential social desirability, how understanding and expression can bias measuring tools, unobservable motivations behind behaviour and students’ different socioeconomic backgrounds. The gap between moral thoughts (intentions) and actual behaviour implies that future studies and moral evaluations should rely less on self-reporting/introspection and focus more on moral behaviour itself. The fact that the combination of individual-level cultural values and nationality predicts students’ moral identities and behaviour intentions implies that educators should pay attention to the influence of national cultural values on students’ morality when focusing on cultivating their personal moral values. Learning from the moral education model in a different culture requires considering the influence of local culture on the model’s outcome. Norm priming (e.g. being told most peers’ generous behaviour) can help with motivating students’ moral behaviour. Moral identity can help shape students’ moral behaviour. However, many other factors should be considered when attempting to shape students’ moral behaviour by strengthening their moral identity. Value commitment through actual behaviour in real life need to be strengthened to reach a mature morally-based identity for adolescents.