Knowing about emotions is vital for children's school adjustment, well-being, and future social relationships. Whereas experiencing emotions is a universal psychological process at the biological level, how emotions are categorized and communicated is shaped by culture. Most studies have investigated cultural differences in emotion (knowledge) in…

The current study aimed to investigate the cultural differences in the developmental origins of children's intent-based moral judgment and moral behavior in the context of indirect reciprocity. To this end, we compared how German and Chinese children interpret and react to antisocial and prosocial interactions between puppets. An actor puppet…

Though it is well-established that self-esteem develops from childhood well into old age, little is known about the processes that influence this change, especially among young populations. This international, cross-sequential study examined the development of self-esteem in 1599 second-graders (Age M[subscript T1] = 7.99, SD[subscript T1] = 0.52…

We address how to conceptualize and measure intentional self-regulation (ISR) among adolescents from four cultures by assessing whether ISR (conceptualized by the SOC model of Selection, Optimization, and Compensation) is represented by three factors (as with adult samples) or as one "adolescence-specific" factor. A total of 4,057 14-…

This paper is aimed at analyzing verbal and nonverbal strategies in terms of body contact, face-to-face contact, and discourse style during the first three months of life in two cultural communities that have been characterized as embodying different cultural models of parenting: German middle-class, and Nso farmer families. It can be demonstrated…

Cultures differ with respect to parenting strategies already during infancy. Distal parenting, i.e., face-to-face context and object stimulation, is prevalent in urban educated middle-class families of Western cultures; proximal parenting, i.e., body contact and body stimulation, is prevalent in rural, low-educated farmer families. Parents from…

This study examined emotional responding (sympathy and distress) and prosocial behavior as well as their relations across four cultures in a specific context. Preschool children (N = 212) from two Western cultures, Germany and Israel, and two South-East Asian cultures, Indonesia and Malaysia, participated in this study. Children's emotional…

Eight German and eight Italian children were observed during their first year in preschool. Cultural differences and similarities in play and behavior and sex differences are reported. Findings suggest that strategies that children use to enter kindergarten or a new group exist universally. (Author/RH)

Two studies compared primary and secondary control beliefs of adolescents living in modern cultures (Germans, North Americans, Jewish Israelis) with those of adolescents in cultures undergoing a transition to modernity (Malaysians, Israeli Druzes). Found that adolescents from transitional cultures endorsed secondary control beliefs to a greater…