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Moral emotions in early childhood: Validation of the Chinese moral emotion questionnaire |
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| Authors: | Zijian Li Boya Li Yung-Ting Tsou Paul Oosterveld Carolien Rieffe |
| Affiliation: | 1. Unit of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands Contribution: Investigation, Formal analysis, Validation, Writing - original draft, Funding acquisition;2. Unit of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Project administration, Supervision, Funding acquisition;3. Unit of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands Contribution: Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing, Supervision;4. Unit of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands Contribution: Formal analysis;5. Unit of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands |
| Abstract: | Moral emotions such as pride, guilt and shame play an important role in the social-emotional development of preschool children. However, there are not many instruments available for measuring moral emotions in the preschool age. Moreover, relatively few research had examined cross-cultural validity of measures for moral emotions. The present study tested the Chinese version of the Moral emotion questionnaire (MEQ) upon a group of (N = 182) Chinese preschool children aged from 2 to 6 years. The Chinese MEQ is a parent-report translated from Dutch, assessing behavioural responses of pride, guilt and shame in preschool children. Confirmatory factor analysis showed satisfactory goodness-of-fit indexes for a three-factor structure (Pride, Guilt, Shame) with 15 loading items. For concurrent relations, the results suggested an adaptive role of pride and guilt and a maladaptive role of shame in the social-emotional development of preschool children. We could conclude that the 15-item Chinese MEQ is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring pride, guilt, and shame in 2–6-year-old children in the Chinese context. |
| Keywords: | Chinese culture moral emotions preschool age validation |