Children's temperament in the US and China: similarities and differences

Abstract

We report the results of research investigating temperamental characteristics of children in the People's Republic of China and the US using a parent‐report instrument, the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ), defining temperament as individual differences in emotional, motoric, and attentional reactivity and self‐regulation. Subjects were 624 6‐ to 7‐year‐old children, from Shanghai and the north‐western region of the US. The 15 CBQ scales were factored for both samples, employing a principal axis factor analysis with an oblique rotation. Our findings indicated considerable similarity of factor structure in the two cultures, obtaining three factors labelled Surgency, Negative Affect, and Attentional Self‐Regulation or Effortful Control. Differences across cultures were also found, with Surgency and Effortful Control scores being relatively higher than Negative Affect in the US sample and Negative Affect being relatively higher than Surgency and Effortful Control in the Chinese sample. Gender differences were also found to vary across cultures. Our findings are congruent with a view of underlying cultural similarities in temperamental variability across these cultures, influenced over time by the children's culturally varied experience.