Two studies were conducted to examine perceptions about achievement and achieving peers in 190 U.S. and Chinese kindergartners. Children provided free-narrative responses to story beginnings about an achieving protagonist in school settings. We found marked cultural differences. For achievement, U.S. children perceived more intellectual…

We examined how mother-child emotional reminiscing is affected by culture, gender, and the valence of the event. Thirty-one Euro-American and 30 Chinese middle-class mothers and their 3-year-old children discussed 1 highly positive and 1 highly negative experience. Mothers and children in both cultures used a greater variety of negative emotion…