Abstract
The chapter analyzes morality as a dependent variable measured by survey responses of some 10,000 children in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade participating in the ISRD3 project in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the USA. The chapter empirically describes differences and commonalities in the values and norms of native-born pupils and their migrant counterparts, and it tests the hypothesis that the effect of migration status, parents, school, religion, and friends on morality will be similar in France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and the USA. Psychometric analysis of the measures of morality (Pro-Social Values Index and Shame Index) supports cross-national measurement equivalence of the measures. We find broadly similar patterns of morality across these five countries, with some country-level variations in degree of moral consensus across children. Multivariate analysis shows higher levels of morality among girls, lower grades, and those who care about opinion of parents, and teachers, among all five youth samples. Religious affiliation is only of minor importance: Muslim pupils in the Netherlands and the UK score slightly lower on morality scales, but in the US, French, and German samples, this is not the case. The effects of being native-born and first- or second-generation immigrant on morality are weak and inconsistent, suggesting the need for country-specific analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
Minority group is defined as a group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination (Wirth 1945). Minorities are also relatively powerless compared to the majority groups.
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- 3.
Covaleskie writes “Knowledge of a set of norms is the first step in moral development, but it is a long way from the final step…If I know the norms, but they are not yet my norms, I might conform to them for all sorts of non-moral reasons—because I want the praise,… or to avoid punishment for violations…However, when society’s norms become internalized, become mine, then something different happens…Shame is a sign that rules have become norms for us, we feel embarrassment or guilt or humiliation upon breaking rules of conventions, but we can only feel shame if we violate norms of a certain sort, moral norms that we have come to see as our own” (Covaleskie 2013).
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The significance of shame for explaining the propensity to engage in crime has been explored by several theoretical frameworks.
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- 6.
Please note that this section describes the sample used for this chapter only, a sample which is somewhat smaller because we only used students who identified themselves as unaffiliated, Islamic, or Christian.
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The research used in this publication is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF)—Grant #1419588.
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Appendix
Appendix
ISRD3 questionnaire items measuring pro-social values
ISRD3 questionnaire items measuring shame
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Marshall, I.H., Marshall, C.E. (2018). Shame and Wrong: Is There a Common Morality Among Young People in France, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and the USA?. In: Roché, S., Hough, M. (eds) Minority Youth and Social Integration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89462-1_2
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