Cultural Foundations of Moral Judgment: A Cross-Cultural Study of Young Adults from Collectivistic (East Asian) and Individualistic (Western) Societies
Abstract
Under globalization, clarifying how culture shapes individuals' moral judgments has become one of the core issues in psychological research. According to moral foundations theory, collectivist cultures (e.g., East Asian cultures) and individualist cultures (e.g., Western cultures) put more emphasis on different core moral values. This study employs cross-cultural comparisons to investigate differences between Chinese and Western youth in moral values, moral dilemma judgments, and cognitive thinking styles, as well as their underlying mechanisms. An online survey was conducted to collect data from 66 young adults aged 18–30 years, including a Chinese group (n=36) and a Western group (n=30). The results of MFQ revealed that compared to the Western group, the Chinese group scored significantly higher on the dimensions of loyalty, authority, and sanctity, and no difference appeared on caring and fairness. When it comes to situation choices, it appeared that two groups differed significantly in distributing their choices among the three types of dilemmas. Results of CRT show that the Western group is oriented towards analytical processing of information, whereas the Chinese group is oriented towards intuitive processing of information. Analysis of mediators reveals that cultural background has direct effects on judgments as well as indirect effects acting through moral values and cognitive styles. This work justifies the differential effect of cultural background on moral judgments and reveals the cultural background's mediational role of values and cognitive styles as well. This work provides empirical evidence supporting an understanding of cultural moral cognition underlying mechanisms.
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