The Conception Of Respect In Childhood And Its Relation To Their Friendships

Respect is an important issue in the field of children's moral development and socialization. However, there have been very few studies on respect in the realm of psychology. And in the very few studies, the behavior difference on respect in different cultures had been the focus, while little effort had been made to define respect in different cultures, which made cross-cultural behavioral comparability questionable. Children developed the ability of respecting others in the interaction of peers, and respecting others could also promote the interaction of peers to form more stable and imitate peer relationships. Friendship, a special peer relationship, compared with other peer relationships, was more likely to relate to respecting others in a process of mutual cyclical growth. The present study aimed at exploring the conception of respect of Chinese childhood in modern society and its development, and furthermore discovering how it related to friendships.With the method of sociometric nomination and prototype methodology, children from Grade 3 through 6 completed the opened questionnaire on the conception of respect in primary children made by ourselves, peer nomination and friendship quality questionnaire. First we analyzed the context and construction of the answers to the opened questionnaire to construct the coding handbook, then we receded these answers and used Z-test and x2 test to analyze the conception of respect in children and its development. At last we studied the relationship between respect conception and friendships by T-test and ANOVA.The results showed:1. Primary children thought respecting others was being polite to others. The character and reasons of respecting were either fine moral character or good academic achievement. They respected seniors but more children mentioned they respected peers.2. Children's conception of respect was different in different interpersonal relationships. Their respect conception towards parents and teachers were similar, that were both because parents and teachers had nurtured or taught them, and because they were seniors and they had been laborious to nurture or to teach them so they ought to be respected. The reasons why they respected friends were mainly that friends could company them and they had got along well with each other.3. Conception of respect showed developmental character in primary students. From Grade 3, children began to develop the conception about equality and valuing others and developed rapidly. From Grade 4, it was markedly to desire others' personal characters to respect others, and from Grade 6, the reasons for friends' company increased. The reasons that seniors or friends ought to be respected gradually decreased in primary students. Children experienced a rapid growth in their respecting towards peers in Grad 3 through 5.4. The conception of respect in different interpersonal relationships developed differently. Primary children's respect towards parents and teachers was mainly unilateral respect and had not changed until Grade 6. While the respect towards friends was mutual respect, in which the reasons of interpersonal interaction had been stable and the conception about equality and valuing others developed rapidly.5. There were significant gender differences on children's conception of respect. On the whole, more girls than boys had conception about equality and valuing others, and generally showed this difference at Grade 6. When there were more boys than girls respecting the ones with fine moral character or good academic achievement and respecting others because they had nurtured or taught them.6. Children's conception of respect was closely related to two levels of friendships. Children of mutual respect had more peer nomination, more friends and friendship quality were higher in which positive score was higher and negative score was lower.7. The conception of respect in different interpersonal context was related to different levels of friendships. The conception of respect i...