Moral Identity from Cross- and Bi-cultural Perspectives

Researchers in moral psychology have initiated projects to investigate moral identity; however, they agreed that a precise definition and methodology of moral identity has been lacking in establishing the value of this new area. One of the challenges is that cultural explorations of moral identity are absent. Moral identity may take different forms in different cultures, or play an important role in morality in some cultures but not in others (Hardy & Carlo, 2005). The present dissertation was aimed at investigating how Western Canadian and Eastern Chinese cultural orientations relate to moral identities. Three studies were conducted. In the first study, I introduced a new empirical approach for assessing moral identity to establish a culturally inclusive list of prototypical conceptions of a highly moral person. It provided a foundation for Studies II and III. The new empirical approach combines several features of moral identity measures that have not been integrated into a coherent approach. The new approach starts from Western individuals’ prototypical conceptions of a highly moral person. Because there is no previous Chinese study using this approach to study moral identity, a free listing of the self-importance of moral attributes was used to generate culturally exclusive attributes, which were then combined with the Western moral attributes to create a culturally inclusive list of attributes to describe a highly moral person. In the second study, I examined similarities and differences in moral identity between Canada and China in the contexts of family, school and community/society. Cultural differences in self-importance of moral identities in each context, cross-context differentiation in moral identity, as well as relative importance of value-domains for defining a person’s moral identity were examined. In both cultural groups, Benevolence and Universalism-tolerance were selected and rated as the cores of defining a moral person. In addition to the core of moral identities, Chinese participants defined a highly moral person more broadly than Canadian participants. With regard to the context, Chinese participants rated the mean level of moral identity more importantly in the context of school and the context of community/society than Canadian participants. Canadian participants’ moral identities on average were more differentiated (less interrelated) across the three contexts than Chinese participants. In the third study, I focused on a sample of bi-cultural Chinese Canadians to extend the investigation of the socio-cultural impact on moral identity. In general, it was found that Chinese-Canadian mean levels of moral identity and value domains were more similar to European Canadians than to Chinese in China. This finding supports the notion of acculturation, with each person’s heritage self-concept being shifted a little over time and acculturated to the norms of mainstream culture. In addition, neither length of residency in Canada nor immigration status predicted the mean-level of moral identity. Only mainstream acculturation remained a significant predictor. Across these studies, a key finding seemed to be the critical role that moral identity has some similarities between Eastern and Western cultures, yet it has a different definition to people and is used in varying levels of degrees from one culture to another. The studies provided invaluable insight into the relative role of identity in the domain of morality across cultures

Moral Emotion Expectancies in Adolescence: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Cross-cultural research on moral development has documented reliable cultural differences in people’s evaluations of moral and immoral actions. Prosocial actions are typically viewed as more obligatory and less discretionary in collectivistic cultures relative to individualistic cultures. While past research mostly focused on moral judgments, it largely neglected moral emotions. The present study was aimed at investigating self- and other-evaluative emotions following (im) moral actions in different situational and cultural contexts. It investigated moral emotion expectancies of Canadian and Chinese adolescents and young adults across different situational contexts. For each culture, 179 Canadian and 193 Chinese adolescents from grade levels 7-8, 10-11 and 1st-2nd year university filled out a questionnaire. Participants were provided with 16 different scenarios depicting moral and immoral actions of self and others in either prosocial or moral contexts. Emotional expectations about themselves and others were assessed following each scenario by asking adolescents to rate various positively as well as negatively charged self- and other evaluative emotions (pride, satisfaction, guilt, shame, admiration, respect, contempt, anger). Obligation/ discretion ratings and Horizontal/Vertical Collectivism-Individualism scales were measured. The main assumptions of cultural differences were confirmed in the present study that Chinese were more likely to hold a collectivist cultural view with more obligations in prosocial contexts and Canadians were more likely to hold an individualist view with more personal discretion in prosocial contexts. In a mixed model ANOVA, significant interactions between situational context (prosocial/moral), types of action (rule abiding/rule conforming) and culture were found for both self- and other-evaluative emotions. Canadian participants expressed more intense negative self-evaluative emotions relative to Chinese participants, in particular in the prosocial context. By contrast, Chinese participants expressed more negative other-evaluative emotions than Canadian participants when confronted with the rule-violating behavior of others in both prosocial and moral contexts. However, regression analyses did not find cross-cultural differences in predicting other-evaluative emotions from self-evaluative emotions in prosocial contexts. Overall, the study points to systematic cultural differences in moral emotions; however, these differences were only partially attributable to moral judgment

Sociocultural Models of Second-Language Learning of Young Immigrants in Canada

The most significant challenge for the minority immigrant is learning a new language. They arrive in a new culture and community hoping to master English quickly in order to achieve their academic and career goals. However, many immigrants have mentioned general barriers resulting from being unable to communicate with peers outside their cultural and linguistic group. Recent research has identified several cognitive variables such as vocabulary, reading aloud, and grammatical judgment related to second-language learning in immigrants; however, little attention was given to sociocultural factors such as acculturation, motivation, and cultural learning because learning a language is a necessary aspect of being socialized into a particular culture. This chapter reviews research of sociocultural models in relation to second-language learning of immigrant youth in Canada. We address this paradigm for research by incorporating both acculturation and sociolinguistic approaches, as well as more traditional cognitive-linguistic approaches, to models of second-language learning in immigrants

Age-Related Differences in Moral Identity Across Adulthood

In this study, age-related differences in adults\u27 moral identity were investigated. Moral identity was conceptualized a context-dependent self-structure that becomes differentiated and (re)integrated in the course of development and that involves a broad range of value-orientations. Based on a cross-sectional sample of 252 participants aged 14 to 65 years (148 women, M = 33.5 years, SD = 16.9) and a modification of the Good Self Assessment, it was demonstrated that mean-level of moral identity (averaged across the contexts of family, school/work and community) significantly increased in the adult years, whereas cross-context differentiation showed a non-linear trend peaking at the age of 25 years. Value-orientations that define individuals\u27 moral identity shifted so that self-direction and rule-conformity became more important with age. Age-related differences in moral identity were associated with, but not fully attributable to changes in personality traits. Overall, findings suggest that moral identity development is a life-long process that starts in adolescence but expands well into middle age

Connectedness with Nature and the Decline of Pro-Environmental Behavior in Adolescence: A comparison of Canada and China

The present research investigated whether age-related differences in connectedness with nature in adolescence are associated with pro-environmental behavior across two cultures, Canada (N = 325) and China (N = 363). While older adolescents demonstrated lower connectedness with nature in both countries, pro-environmental behavior was inversely associated with age only in Canada but not in China. To investigate this cultural difference, we conducted a moderated mediation analysis. Positive self-evaluative emotion expectancies (pride/satisfaction) for engaging in pro-environmental behavior were found to mediate the interaction effect of culture and age when predicting pro-environmental behavior for Chinese but not for Canadian adolescents. The present research suggests that the development of pro-environmental behavior is contextually bounded and multi-directional. Effective promotion of pro-environmental behavior in adolescence should target culturally specific mechanisms, may it be connectedness with nature or moral emotions

Examining the generalizability of research findings from archival data

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples

Understanding family dynamics in a cross-cultural sample: a multi-national study

The Family Systems Circumplex Model posits that balanced levels of cohesion and adaptability are associated with positive familial outcomes, whereas extremely high or low levels of these factors are associated with deleterious outcomes. Despite the popularity and utility of this model in Western cultures, there is a dearth of empirical data supporting its use in more culturally diverse contexts. The current, preregistered study assessed the Family Circumplex Model, cultural factors, and emerging adult outcomes across seven countries (i.e., China, Iran, Nigeria, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Participants were N = 3,593 emerging adults, mostly self-identifying as women (71.3%). Collaborators were participants in Psi Chi’s Network for International Collaborative Exchange (NICE) and administered measures related to family dynamics and cultural orientation to participants in a random order. Results indicated that the Family Circumplex Model did not fit cross-culturally. As such, a new model was adapted, the Expanded Circumplex Model, which demonstrated invariance across samples and between women and men. The Expanded Circumplex Model retained 6 constructs with differences regarding the separation of disengagement into 2 variables and the combining of adaptive flexibility and cohesion. The current study suggests that the cultural context in which family dynamics occur should be taken into consideration when conceptualizing family dynamics theory and measurement. Future work should seek to replicate and further apply the Expanded Circumplex Model to familial outcomes