Moral emotions in early childhood: Validation of the Chinese Moral Emotion Questionnaire

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.