Context Differentiation of Moral Identity: A Cultural Comparison between Chinese-Canadian Immigrants and Chinese in China

Immigrants face many challenges in adapting to a new cultural environment. On one hand, immigrants modify their moral values to conform more to those that prevail in their new home country. On the other hand, they may maintain their traditional moral identities within their families (Knafo & Schwartz, 2001). The present study investigated differentiation in moral identity across contexts of family, school, and society among a group of Chinese-Canadian immigrants and Chinese in China. We expected that there would be more differentiation in moral identity across contexts in the sample of Chinese-Canadian immigrants.

The sample included 124 Chinese-Canadian immigrants and 148 Chinese in China. Chinese immigrants’ length of residency in Canada ranged from one year to 22 years (M_year = 8.16).

Moral identity was measured in a questionnaire (Jia & Krettenauer, 2017). Participants rated the importance of selected moral values in three contexts: family, school, and society. An averaged standardized residual score was generated to reflect the cross-context differentiation in moral identity (Baird, 2006).

ANOVA indicated that there was a significant cultural difference in the cross-context differentiation, F = 7.99, p < .01, ɳ² = .04. The cross-context differentiation in Chinese-Canadian immigrants (M = .018) was higher than the score of Chinese in China (M = -.233). In addition, a hierarchical regression analysis indicated that mainstream acculturation negatively predicted Chinese immigrants’ cross-context differentiation of moral identity

In general, these findings of cross-context differentiation in moral identity provide an insight to an issue of cultural adaption in this minority group in Canada.