The Perceived Social Contexts of Adolescents' Misconduct: A Comparative Study of Youths in Three Cultures

Abstract

This cross-cultural, ecologically framed study (Bronfenbrenner, 1989) examined relations between adolescents' involvement in misconduct and their perceptions of others' behavior and attitudes toward youths' misconduct (i.e., family members, close friends, school peers, and neighborhood adults). Participants were 16- to 17-year-olds in the Los Angeles area (n = 201), Seoul, Korea (n = 391), and Tianjin, China (n = 502). As anticipated, U.S. youths engaged in more misconduct than Korean and Chinese youths, and Koreans exceeded Chinese. In multivariate analyses, perceived behavior and sanctions of close friends were the strongest predictors of misconduct across all 3 cultural settings. An independent effect of school peers on misconduct was detected only among Chinese youths, whereas a unique effect of neighborhood adults was found only among U.S. adolescents. The absence of perceived neighborhood effects for Korean and Chinese youths was due primarily to shared variance between perceived behavior of neighbors and family members. Results of this study suggest that living in settings with closer links to the global economy is associated with lax conduct and the perception of more lenient attitudes toward adolescent misbehavior. Copyright © 2000, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.