Being and Becoming Moral in a Chinese Culture: Unique or Universal?

Abstract

The state of being moral and the process of becoming moral was examined in a sample of 211 Chinese students from Taiwan who were divided into seven age groups. "Structured wholeness" was demonstrated by cross-sectional data that showed that moral mean ings associated with the self are organized coherently across different situations; this finding describes the state of being moral. With respect to the process of becoming moral, the longitudinal data suggested an invariant sequence of moral reasoning stages, with little retrogression or skipping of stages by most subjects. Social class but not gender had a positive although modest effect on rate of development. A comparison of the Chinese data with previous American and Israeli data points to basic cross-cultural similari ties in terms of sequence of stages and rate of development.