Development Of The Elementary-school Children's Evaluation And Behavior Of Modesty

On the one hand, as a prosocial behavior, modesty has distinctive characteristics. On the other hand, modesty is also a kind of lying in nature, so in recent years, it is becoming the research focus of the developmental psychologists. And this research is based on our former research on children's evaluation to the behaviors of lying and their concepts of lying. K.Lee et al (1997) had examined the defference between the Canadian and Chinese children's concepts of lying. Their results indicates that, there is a cultural difference between the two country's children in their comprehension of the concepts of lying, that is, the modesty is more appreciated in Chinese cultural environment than in the West countries. The purpose of this research is to repulicate and expand their research , to discuss the developmental trends of the children's evaiation of modesty from 7- to 11 year-old, and attempt to carry out a series of experiments to reveal the developmental trends of the corresponding children's behaviors of modesty. And particularly, we'd like to find out the relationshop between the children's evaluation and actual behavior of modesty and to know what the impact of age and social condition factors to the children's behavior. The results shows: ① there is a remarkable difference among the children of different ages in their evaluation to the modest and unmodest behaviors, that is, during the children's age has increased, their postive evaluation to the unmodest behaviors is discreaing, while their postive evaluation to the modest behaviors is increasing; ②there are about four kinds of concepts among the children, and there is also a remarkable difference among the children of different ages, that is, during thechildren's age has increased, the proportion of the children who have the concept of modesty is increasing. Furthermore, a new kind of concepts thai one person should admit his behaviors and needn't be modest has appeard since the 9-year-old children . ?there is also a remarkable difference among the children of different ages in their modest behaviors, and this difference is influenced by the social condition factor. (Dthere is no difference among the children of different sexes in the children's evauation and behaviors of modesty. (§)there is also a remarkable correlation between the the children's evaluation and behaviors of modesty, and mis relationshop is influenced by the age factor.