The perceived social contexts of adolescents' misconduct: A comparative study of youths in three cultures

This cross-cultural, ecologically framed study (Bronfenbrenner, 1989) exami ned relations between adolescents' involvement in misconduct and their perc eptions of others' behavior and attitudes toward youths' misconduct (i.e., family members, close friends, school peers, and neighborhood adults). Part icipants 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 exc eeded Chinese. In multivariate analyses, perceived behavior and sanctions o f close friends were the strongest predictors of misconduct across all 3 cu ltural settings. An independent effect of school peers on misconduct was de tected only among Chinese youths, whereas a unique effect of neighborhood a dults was found only among U.S. adolescents. The absence of perceived neigh borhood effects for Korean and Chinese youths was due primarily to shared v ariance between perceived behavior of neighbors and family members. Results of this study suggest that living in settings with closer links to the glo bal economy is associated with lax conduct and the perception of more lenie nt attitudes toward adolescent misbehavior.