Family Authority Structures and the Disposition to Inform on Peers among Urban Children in West Germany and Israel.

Cross-cultural surveys of 6th grade children in 12 countries presented them with six hypothetical situations in which friends had committed minor violations of adult norms (stealing, cheating on a test, breaking a window, and mischievous pranks). They were asked if they would inform in response to an adult who asks for the names of those involved. Summarizing 22 surveys revealed that within cultures the disposition to inform was stronger in rural than in urban children and in girls than boys. Analysis of two surveys in Israel and West Germany showed: (1) informing generally more likely when demanded by school authorities after school-related mischief than when demanded by an unspecified adult who was the victim of the mischief; (2) German children more disposed to inform than the Israelis (although both samples were very unlikely to inform and were the two least likely of the 12 countries studied); (3) the relation of informing to family authority structure was similar for the same sex across culture, especially for girls, but unrelated across sex within culture; and (4) combining cultures, informing in boys was more likely for those who described their family as intermediate in the degree of parental decision-making differentiation than for those from either undifferentiated or highly differentiated families, but was unrelated to whether father or mother made most of the decisions. (Author)