Abstract
The present study examines ethical concepts in children's stories. The subject group of 94 children was derived from three different cultures: Swedish (44 children), Hungarian (18 children) and Chinese (32 children), who were all 6-7 years old. The assembled material consisted of transcribed stories (interviews). The task given to each child was that he or she should make up their own story about a dog. Karlsson's EPP method was used for the analysis of the material. The results consisted of 12 qualitative categories of ethical meaning which gave a vision of the good life formulated briefly as: home: safe and good but also boring, whereas out-in-the world: exciting and enticing but also threatening and dangerous, then home again, to security. Deeper, underlying psychological consequences are discussed from the standpoint of prevailing notions.
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