Ji Li-Jun
Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2008 May;34(5):613-22. doi: 10.1177/0146167207313935. Epub 2008 Mar 5.
Chinese and Canadian children were compared to examine cultural and developmental differences in lay theories of change: implicit beliefs about how the world develops and changes over time. Chinese and Canadian children (ages 7, 9, and 11 years) made predictions about future performance, relationships, happiness, and parental incomes based on a series of scenarios. Overall, the Chinese children predicted greater change than did the Canadian children, indicating that they believed more in change than did the Canadians. Moreover, cultural differences increased significantly with age: In comparison with their Canadian counterparts, Chinese children made no more change predictions at age 7, made slightly more change predictions at age 9, and made significantly more change predictions at age 11. This was true for questions starting with an extremely positive or negative state and those starting with a neutral state. Reasons for cultural and developmental differences were discussed.
对中国儿童和加拿大儿童进行了比较，以研究关于变化的朴素理论中的文化和发展差异：即关于世界如何随着时间发展和变化的隐含信念。中国和加拿大的儿童（7岁、9岁和11岁）根据一系列情景对未来的表现、人际关系、幸福感和父母收入进行了预测。总体而言，中国儿童比加拿大儿童预测的变化更大，这表明他们比加拿大人更相信变化。此外，文化差异随着年龄的增长而显著增加：与加拿大同龄人相比，中国7岁儿童做出的变化预测并不更多，9岁儿童做出的变化预测略有增加，11岁儿童做出的变化预测则显著更多。对于以极其积极或消极状态开头的问题以及以中性状态开头的问题都是如此。文中讨论了文化和发展差异的原因。
