Roberts Steven O, Guo Cai, Ho Arnold K, Gelman Susan A
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2018 Jan;165:148-160. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.03.018. Epub 2017 May 25.
Research with U.S. samples found that children use descriptive group regularities (characteristics shared by individuals within a group) to generate prescriptive judgments (characteristics that should be shared by individuals within a group). Here, we assessed this descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency in a sample of children (ages 4-13years) and adults (ages 18-40years) from mainland China. Participants were introduced to novel groups (i.e., Hibbles and Glerks) who engaged in contrasting morally neutral behaviors (e.g., listening to different kinds of music) and then to conforming and non-conforming individuals (e.g., a Hibble who listened to music more typical of Glerks). Like U.S. children, Chinese children disapproved of non-conformity and rates of disapproval declined with age. However, compared with U.S. children, younger Chinese children (ages 4-6years) rated non-conformity more disapprovingly, and unlike U.S. adults, Chinese adults rated non-conformity more negatively than conformity. Moreover, compared with U.S. participants, Chinese participants across all age groups appealed more often to norm-based explanations when justifying their disapproval. These data provide a cross-cultural replication of children's descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency but also reveal cross-cultural variation, and they have implications for understanding the mechanisms that underlie stereotyping and normative reasoning.
对美国样本的研究发现，儿童会利用描述性群体规律（群体内个体共有的特征）来做出规范性判断（群体内个体应共有的特征）。在此，我们对来自中国大陆的儿童（4至13岁）和成年人（18至40岁）样本中的这种从描述到规范的倾向进行了评估。参与者被介绍了一些新的群体（即希布尔斯和格勒克斯），这些群体表现出对比鲜明的道德中立行为（例如，听不同类型的音乐），然后又被介绍了符合和不符合群体行为的个体（例如，一个听着更像格勒克斯风格音乐的希布尔斯）。与美国儿童一样，中国儿童不赞成不符合群体行为的做法，且不赞成率随年龄增长而下降。然而，与美国儿童相比，中国年龄较小的儿童（4至6岁）对不符合群体行为的评价更为负面，而且与美国成年人不同的是，中国成年人对不符合群体行为的评价比对符合群体行为的评价更为负面。此外，与美国参与者相比，所有年龄段的中国参与者在为自己的不赞成态度辩护时，更频繁地诉诸基于规范的解释。这些数据提供了儿童从描述到规范倾向的跨文化复制，但也揭示了跨文化差异，并且对理解刻板印象和规范推理背后的机制具有启示意义。
