Mother-child Conversation on Moral, Conventional and Personal Choices and Children’s Conceptual Beliefs about Choice

Children’s understanding of choices differs across domains and cultural contexts. Specifically, young children view actions in the personal domain as free choices, but view moral and conventional actions as obligatory (Chernyak et al., 2013). Research done across cultures shows that compared to Asian children, U.S. children are more likely to think they can choose to act against social and moral norms (e.g. Chernyak et al., 2013). Here we investigated one possible explanation for such cultural variation: mother-child conversation about moral, conventional and personal choices. In Study 1, we asked mother-child dyads (N=34) in the U.S. to discuss three picture sets which respectively depict a moral choice (share vs. take), a conventional choice (umbrella vs. a bucket for rain) and a personal choice (playing with a ball vs. truck). Results suggest that parents focused on different aspects when talking about choices in different domains. For example, mothers use explicit choice words (e.g. “choose”, “decide”) only when talking about personal and conventional stories, but not moral stories. In Study 2, we asked children in the same community (N=30) ages 5 to 7 to talk about the same sets of pictures independently. Results suggest that children talk more like their parents when they get older. In Study 3, we are currently replicating the studies with Chinese parents and children. Preliminary analyses suggest both cultural similarity and variation. We will discuss the influence of parent-child conversation about different types of choices on children’s own conceptual beliefs about choices and their self-regulation behaviors across cultures.