Charles C. Helwig

A constructivist approach to understanding the development of reasoning about rights and authority within cultural contexts

Abstract In this article we discuss research in four cultures — the United States, Canada, China and India — that examines children’s and adolescents’ reasoning about rights and authority. We argue that attempts to describe social reasoning in global terms, either as culturally prioritizing concerns with rights over concerns with authority, or as developmentally replacing an authority orientation with a rights orientation, are insufficient to capture the complexity of social judgments. The research demonstrates the co-existence of concerns with rights, justice, tradition and authority among individuals, and highlights their frequent questioning and rejection of traditional cultural practices. The role that informational assumptions play in the diversity of reasoning about hierarchical social practices is also examined. It is argued that a constructivist model of social development must consider how cultural practices are evaluated by individuals, and account for the multiple concepts that individuals bring to bear in interpreting and evaluating their social reality.

Children's Evaluations of Decision‐Making Procedures in Peer, Family, and School Contexts

Childrens evaluations of decision-making procedures were examined in applications in different social contexts. Seventy-two children evenly divided into three grade levels (grades 1-2, 3-4, 5-6) were administered a structured interview requiring them to evaluate three decision-making procedures (consensus, majority rule, and authority-based) embedded in three social contexts (peer group, family, and school classroom) and to select the most appropriate decision-making procedure for two specific decisions: one expected to pull for procedures emphasizing childrens autonomous decision making, and one expected to pull for adult authority. Judgments of decision-making procedures at all grade levels did not show a heteronomous acceptance of adult authority but rather were influenced by social context and type of decision. In general, consensus was preferred in peer and family contexts and authority-based procedures were preferred for school decisions about curriculum. Older children were more likely than younger children to consider how childrens limited knowledge and competence may constrain their autonomous decision making.

The spatial attributes of stimulus frequency in the median sagittal plane and their role in sound localization.

Stimulus cues used to locate sounds in the median sagittal plane were investigated. Listeners first were required to report the location of noise bands 1.0 kHz wide whose center frequencies ranged from 4.0 through 14.0 kHz. It was found that the apparent locations of the stimuli depended on their frequency compositions, not their places of origin. As the center frequency was increased from 4.0 to about 12.0 kHz, the apparent location of the sound moved from in front of the subject to the rear. Then, at center frequencies of around 13.0 kHz, the sounds again appeared to come from the front. The authors infer that different frequency regions within the sounds spectrum possess specific spatial referents along the median sagittal plane. When the bandwidth was increased to 4.0 kHz, listeners could locate the stimuli with reasonable proficiency only for the sectors of the median sagittal plane that were represented by the spatial referents inherent in the frequency composition of the stimulus. Finally, a stimulus comprising all audible frequencies above 4.0 kHz could be located proficiently, and it is concluded that this sound, unlike the others, contained all spatial referents for the median sagittal plane, hence the superior performance on the localization task.

Children's Judgments of Flags and Flag‐Burning

This study examined childrens conceptions of flags as social conventions and understandings of the symbolic and psychological consequences associated with transgressions toward flags. Seventy-two children, at 6, 8, and 10 years, answered general questions about flags as social conventions and judged flag-burning scenarios in which intentions of agents and consequences for recipients were varied. Flag-burning acts were motivated by symbolic, accidental, or instrumental intentions and occurred in public or private. Children at all ages viewed flags as social conventions (i.e., alterable), and symbolic acts of flag-burning occurring in public locations were judged more negatively than private transgressions. Age differences were found in evaluations of instrumental violations and in justifications used to evaluate flag-burning incidents. Overall, findings suggest that despite age-related increases in understanding of flags as meaningful collective symbols, children at all ages considered transgressions to be important and to have moral consequences (i.e., psychological harm).

An Event‐Related Potential Study of Adolescents' and Young Adults' Judgments of Moral and Social Conventional Violations

The neurocognitive development of moral and conventional judgments was examined. Event-related potentials were recorded while 24 adolescents (13 years) and 30 young adults (20 years) read scenarios with 1 of 3 endings: moral violations, conventional violations, or neutral acts. Participants judged whether the act was acceptable or unacceptable when a rule was assumed or removed. Across age, reaction times were faster for moral than conventional violations when a rule was assumed. Adolescents had larger N2 amplitudes than adults for moral and neutral, but not conventional, acts. N2 amplitudes were larger when a rule was removed than assumed for moral, but not conventional, violations. These findings suggest that the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying moral and conventional judgments continue to develop beyond early adolescence.

Young Adults’ Attitudes and Reasoning About Gender Roles in the Family Context

Although the roles of men and women in society and the workplace have undergone dramatic change, there has been comparatively less change in the family roles of men and women. This study investigated young adults’ endorsements of and reasoning about gender roles in the context of the family. Participants (N = 224) indicated their level of agreement with six different family roles and provided open-ended reasons to support their views. Social cognitive domain theory was used as a framework to interpret their open-ended reasoning. Results showed that participants applied reasoning based on ideas of morality (fairness and well-being), social conventions, and personal choice in ways that varied by participants’ gender, ethnic background (Asian or European Canadian), and the particular gender role to which they were responding. When supporting egalitarian role divisions, women were more likely to base their reasoning on morality, whereas men were more likely to rely on social conventions. In contrast, stereotypes and issues of well-being (regarding women’s roles), and social conventions (regarding men’s traditional roles) were used to support the maintenance of traditional role divisions. The results have implications for educators and policy makers and are discussed with a focus on how attitudes about family roles may be changed most effectively to increase egalitarian attitudes. Implications for the measurement of gender-role attitudes are also discussed.

The Development of Conceptions of Personal Autonomy, Rights, and Democracy, and Their Relation to Psychological Well-Being

Children in a variety of cultural contexts have been shown to develop concerns with personal autonomy and rights, and these conceptions not only place limits on the forms of social organization seen as legitimate but also have relevance for children’s psychological well-being, consistent with self-determination theory. Although many current psychological theories relegate freedoms, rights, and democracy to products of Western intellectual traditions or cultural settings, a body of new and emerging psychological evidence, conducted in a variety of cultural settings, both Eastern and Western, and from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including self-determination theory, suggests otherwise. Areas of personal jurisdiction, choice, and participation are claimed by children and adolescents themselves as they develop explicit conceptions of their own autonomy and reflect on the different types of social rules and structures that they experience in their daily lives. These conceptions of autonomy and democracy have been shown to have functional significance for the realization of individuals’ psychological well-being in diverse cultural settings.

Urban and Rural Chinese Adolescents’ Judgments and Reasoning About Personal and Group Jurisdiction

This research applied social domain theory to illuminate reasoning about the perceived legitimacy and limits of group decision making (majority rule) among adolescents from urban and rural China (N = 160). Study 1 revealed that adolescents from both urban and rural China judged group decision making as acceptable for both social conventional and prudential issues, but not for personal issues or those that entailed possible harmful coercion of others. Study 2 revealed that personal jurisdiction develops later for rural than urban adolescents for certain issues (democratic rights to political participation and choice of friends). Results indicate that reasoning about group and personal jurisdiction in a non-Western society (China) is influenced by social domain, age, and environmental setting (modern vs. traditional).

The Psychology of Strengths and Weaknesses: Assessing Self-enhancing and Self-critical Tendencies in Eastern and Western Cultures

We examined the extent to which individuals from East Asia and North America exhibit self-enhancing and self-critical tendencies when appraising their personal strengths and weaknesses, to test whether a self-critical motivation may replace a self-enhancing motivation among Easterners. Four hundred four university students from Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, and the United States were surveyed concerning their beliefs about ten self-nominated positive and negative attributes. Questions included how long they have possessed each attribute, its importance and salience, and the desire to improve the attribute. The pattern of findings suggests that both self-enhancing and self-critical tendencies coexist within individuals across both cultural contexts, although Easterners were less self-enhancing and more self-critical than Westerners.

A Needs-Based Perspective on Cultural Differences in Identity Formation

This article proposes a needs-based perspective toward understanding cultural differences in the self-identification of strengths and weaknesses. The authors argue that individuals have basic psychological needs for relatedness and autonomy; and that, because collectivistic and individualistic cultures tend to prioritize one need over the other, identities incorporate an awareness of the unmet need. The studys 210 Eastern (Chinese and Japanese) and 194 Western (Canadian and American) participants reported on five of their positive and negative attributes. The findings confirm the study hypotheses that Westerners are more likely than Easterners to report attributes associated with separation from others as weaknesses and relatedness attributes as strengths; and that Easterners are more likely than Westerners to report attributes associated with a lack of autonomy as weaknesses.