Chinese Youth’s Reported Social and Moral Transgressions and Strategies for Self-Correction

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore Chinese adolescent’s social and moral transgressions and strategies for self-correction. For this study, following protocols that have been approved by an Institutional Review Board, 61 Chinese adolescents living in Guangzhou—distributed across three age groups: 10- to 11-year-olds ( N = 21, Mage = 11.03 years, SD = 0.43 years), 12- to 13-year-olds ( N = 20, Mage = 12.92 years, SD = 0.35 years), and 15- to 16-year-olds ( N = 20, Mage = 16.15 years, SD = 0.30 years)—participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews. The study employed a deductive analytical approach based on prior social domain research on children’s and adolescents’ transgressions and strategies for self-correction. This study found that Chinese youth reported conventional transgression events more frequently than any other domain. Moreover, many of adolescents’ transgressions involved academic considerations, suggesting that how adolescents’ time is organized and the social expectations for adolescent behavior influence the types of transgressions and justifications adolescents will make. Furthermore, participants reported developing self-correcting strategies following 73.6% of events, while 74.5% of strategies were reported to be developed by the adolescents themselves. Therefore, the findings suggest that there is room for adults to collaborate with adolescents in developing strategies to prevent future misbehavior and to encourage youth to not only be “good” or “moral” but also to be and do better.