We investigated the developmental courses of both implicit and explicit racial biases in relation to the perceived social status of outgroups. We did so by assessing these biases among Chinese participants (N = 200, age range from 4- to 19-year-olds) toward 2 different other-race groups that differ in terms of perceived social status (i.e., Whites…

This article examines relationships between children and youths' judgments and their justifications of truth telling and verbal deception, in situational and cultural contexts. Han Chinese, Euro-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians, seven- to 17-years of age were presented competitive scenarios in which protagonists told either lies to protect, or…

We used a matching-to-sample task and manipulated facial pose and feature composition to examine the other-race effect (ORE) in face identity recognition between 5 and 10 years of age. Overall, the present findings provide a genuine measure of own- and other-race face identity recognition in children that is independent of photographic and image…

Morality is an evolved aspect of human nature, yet is heavily influenced by cultural environment. This developmental study adopted an integrative approach by combining measures of socioeconomic status (SES), executive function, affective sharing, empathic concern, theory of mind, and moral judgment in predicting sharing behavior in children (N =…

Recent research indicates that moral judgment and 1st-order theory of mind abilities are related. What is not known, however, is how 2nd-order theory of mind is related to moral judgment. In the present study, we extended previous findings by administering a morally relevant theory of mind task (an accidental transgressor) to 4- to 7-year-old…

American and Japanese children's evaluations of the reporting of peers' transgressions to authority figures were investigated. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old children (N = 160) and adults (N = 62) were presented with vignettes and were asked to evaluate the decisions of child observers who reported their friend's either major or relatively minor…

The present investigation examined the relation between honesty, benevolence, and trust in children. One hundred and eight 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds were read four story types in which the character's honesty (honesty or dishonest) was crossed with their intentions (helping or harming). Children rated the story character's honesty, benevolence, and…

Although there has been extensive research on children's moral knowledge about lying and truth-telling and their actual lie- or truth-telling behaviors, research to examine the relation between these two is extremely rare. This study examined one hundred and twenty 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds' moral understanding of lies and their actual lying…

This cross-cultural study of the moral judgements of Mainland Han-Chinese, Chinese-Canadian, and Euro-Canadian children aged seven to 11 examined the evaluations of narrative protagonists' modest lies and self-promoting truthful statements in situations where they had done a good deed. The story characters had thus either lied or told the truth…

This research examined how Chinese children make moral judgments about lie telling and truth telling when facing a "white lie" or "politeness" dilemma in which telling a blunt truth is likely to hurt the feelings of another. We examined the possibility that the judgments of participants (7-11 years of age, N=240) would differ…

The way children evaluate the reporting of peers' transgressions to authority figures was investigated. Participants, ages 6-11 years (N = 60), were presented with a series of vignettes, each of which depicted a child who committed either a minor transgression (such as not finishing the vegetables at lunch) or a more serious transgression (such as…

Children's reasoning about the willingness of peers to convey accurate positive and negative performance feedback to others was investigated among a total of 179 6- to 11-year-olds from the USA and China. In Study 1, which was conducted in the USA only, participants responded that peers would be more likely to provide positive feedback than…

Children's recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with…

The present study examined the developmental origin of "blue lies", a pervasive form of lying in the adult world that is told purportedly to benefit a collective. Seven, 9-, and 11-year-old Chinese children were surreptitiously placed in a real-life situation where they decided whether to lie to conceal their group's cheating behavior. Children…

The way in which children evaluate people's claims about their own psychological characteristics was examined. Among children ages 6-11 from the United States and China (total N = 243), there was an age-related increase in skepticism about self-report concerning the highly value-laden characteristics "honest", "smart", and…