EAPSI: Analyzing cultural differences about how children make moral judgments under social pressure

最近的研究发现，在面对相互矛盾的视觉证据时，4岁的儿童会与他们不准确的同龄人保持一致。此外，亚裔美国儿童符合率高于白人美国儿童，这表明父母教养方式的文化差异可能是造成这些差异的原因。本研究将探讨文化规范如何影响儿童在社会压力下做出视觉、道德和社会常规判断的能力。了解为什么新加坡学龄前儿童可能会敏感的同龄人作为一个关键的社会参考群体，可以帮助我们防止不良的社会学习和同龄人的压力问题在小学。新加坡独特的教育重点和社会对道德责任的控制，使其成为研究者研究道德一致性的一个合适的文化。这项研究将与新加坡南洋理工大学的亚洲社会心理学专家Catherine Wan教授合作进行。研究采用经典从众任务的改良版，研究结构将包括视频剪辑和访谈。在研究过程中，3-5岁的儿童将被要求执行基本的知觉任务（即确定线的长度），道德判断任务（即确定是否可以接受推另一个孩子）和社会常规任务（即确定是否可以接受穿泳衣上学）。孩子们要么选择自己的判断，要么同意视频中不准确的群体所说的话，这一比例将被衡量。调查也将分发给父母，以检查孩子的气质和父母的风格对顺从的影响。研究新加坡儿童如何做决定，对其他集体主义社会和有群体倾向的少数群体有更大的影响。这个NSF EAPSI奖是与新加坡国家研究基金会合作资助的。

Recent research has found that in the face of conflicting visual evidence, children as young as 4 years old conform to their inaccurate peers. Moreover, Asian American children conform at higher rates than Caucasian American children, suggesting that cultural differences in parenting style might account for some of these differences. The present study will explore how cultural norms impact children's ability to make visual, moral, and social-conventional judgments under social pressure. Understanding why Singaporean preschool children might be sensitive to their peers as a key social reference group can help us to prevent poor social learning and peer pressure issues in primary school. Singapore's unique educational emphasis and societal control over moral responsibility makes it an opportune culture for researchers to examine moral conformity. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Professor Catherine Wan, a noted Asian Social Psychology expert, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.Using modified versions of a classic conformity task, the structure of the study will include video clips followed by interviews. During the study, 3-5 year old children will be asked to perform basic perceptual tasks (i.e. determining line length), moral judgment tasks (i.e. determining whether it is acceptable to shove another child), and social-conventional tasks (i.e. determining whether it is acceptable to wear a bathing suit to school). The rate at which children either choose to go with their own judgment or agree with what the inaccurate groups in the videos say will be measured. Surveys will also be distributed to the parents to examine the influence of child's temperament and parenting styles on conformity. Examining how Singaporean children make decisions has larger implications for other collectivist societies and minority groups that share group-oriented tendencies. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the National Research Foundation of Singapore.