• 文化如何影响道德?文化间变异、文化内变异与多元文化的视角

    Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》

    Abstract: Moral judgments and behaviors are highly sensitive to culture. The understanding and construction of the exact same moral issues can vary substantially across individuals who come from different cultural backgrounds or possess different levels of multicultural experiences. Social psychologists are increasingly interested in closely looking at human morality through the lens of culture, partly driven by a renaissance of cultural psychology in the 1980s and the broadening and deepening of globalization. Based upon the perspective of cultural psychology, we briefly summarize how particular cultural factors (e.g. geography, ecology, social class) influence individuals’ moral judgments and behaviors from three facets: between-culture variations, within-culture variations, and multiculturalism. Together, it is our hope that this review article will inspire future research to better understand how Chinese people’s moral patterns and value systems have changed and are changing in the context of rapid and deep cultural change in China.

  • 个人主义上升, 集体主义式微?——全球文化变迁与民众心理变化

    Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》

    Abstract: In this article, we reviewed the large body of research examining the impacts of social change on human psychology and culture. Our review revealed an increasing trend of individualism and, at the meantime, decreasing collectivism. This trend manifests on various societal and individual-level indicators, including relationship structures, first-person pronouns use, naming practices, value preferences, personality, sexual and religious attitudes, child-rearing goals and child development, cognitive styles and emotional experiences. Our review also demonstrated the complexities of cultural and psychological change, including the non-linearity of the change, endurance of traditional culture and emerging multi-cultural society. At the end, we pointed out some limitations of the existing research and highlighted some possible directions of future research.

  • 主观阶层研究取向的贡献与弊端

    Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》

    Abstract: Recently, researchers in the field of social class psychology have attached great importance to the perspective of subjective class. This is highlighted by emphasizing the subjective class component in the social class concept. According to this approach, a person's social class includes both the objective social resources they control (i.e., the objective class) and their perception of their own social status (i.e., the subjective class). In terms of theory, measurement, design, and topic selection, research based on this theoretical orientation tends to focus on the investigation of issues related to subjective class. In theory, subjective class, as a personal perception reflecting social class, is considered to be able to reflect a person's social class level comprehensively and effectively. Moreover, by understanding social class as a hierarchical notion, this theoretical orientation provides the foundation for quantitative research in the psychology of social class. Conceptually, subjective class is also considered to be better able to reflect the effect of social class on individuals’ psychological and behavioral exhibition, which not only promotes the simplification of social class measurement but also makes social class (i.e., a traditional sociological variable) more psychologically explained. It is of great significance to the development of research in this field. In terms of the method, researchers use a lot of experimental methods to examine the causal relationship between social class and a dependent variable by manipulating subjective class. This makes up for the insufficiency of previous studies on objective classes that could only reveal correlations and provide methodological assistance for drawing key conclusions in this field. In terms of research topics, the emphasis on subjective class has helped researchers to expand the scope of research in the psychology of social class. Themes such as the experience of social class, sign of social class, and perception of class mobility have all received more attention. Behind this series of research progress, the important foundational role of the orientation cannot be ignored. However, while this research orientation affirms the contributions of the above four aspects, the proposal of this idea has also led to certain negative effects. First, by only focusing on the subjective class attributes in the social class, or even equating the subjective class with the social class, this approach greatly reduces the rich connotation of the social class theoretically, and it cannot fully reflect the reality of this concept. Second, previous studies have found significant inconsistency between the concepts of subjective and objective class, which led to the risk of using subjective class as an operational definition of social class at the conceptual measurement level. Third, for the experiment of manipulating the subjective class, since the objective class of the subjects does not change with the experimental treatment, it is difficult to interpret the research results as the social class effect. Finally, because many studies focus on subjective class, it seems that the issue of social class has lost its original pluralistic and complex characteristics in the real society, and more of it has become the comparison between "higher" and "lower class." If we draw on the sociology research ideas, social class psychology can pay more attention to and reveal some problems in the process of social development. Based on the above advantages and disadvantages, future social class psychology research focusing on subjective class should consider further in-depth basic research to clarify the relationship between objective and subjective classes and their different predictive effects. Furthermore, a more detailed distinction can be made between subjective class and objective class. Similarly, more consideration should be given to combining the perspective of sociology to understand and respond to the problems of contemporary society based on specific social class groups in reality.

  • 突发公共事件中公众的补偿性控制

    Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》

    Abstract: Public emergencies refer to social events that occur suddenly, cause, or may cause serious social harm and require emergency measures in dealing with them. Previous studies have focused on the psychological and behavioral responses of individuals during public emergencies. However, most of these studies have focused on describing psychological phenomena rather than exploring psychological mechanisms. Thus, the present article proposes that compensatory control theory can be used as a basic theoretical framework to understand a series of psychological and behavioral manifestations of individuals in the context of public emergencies. The core idea of this theory is that when individuals lack a sense of control, they tend to show a variety of reactions that have a common motivation; that is seeking structure. We analyzed the applicability of compensatory control theory to explain individuals’ psychological performance in the context of public emergencies from four perspectives. First, after major public emergencies occur, conspiracy theories on the cause of the event often follow. From the perspective of compensatory control theory, when individuals’ sense of control is threatened due to the occurrence of public emergencies, they tend to form conspiratorial thinking to some extent. Hence, they are eager to obtain a sense of order or structure to compensate. Since it is often difficult for authorities to immediately give a definitive answer about the cause of the incident, the conspiracy theory is often believed, which satisfies people’s search for causality and certainty. Second, during public emergencies, people tend to believe in and spread rumors. From the perspective of compensatory control theory, this can also be interpreted as individuals’ need to obtain a sense of structure brought about by deterministic information in a crisis, which leads to blind acceptance of unreliable information. Third, people exposed to public emergencies will also show stronger concern for moral issues, which, according to the compensatory control theory, is an individual’s search for certain social values. Further, the need for order and structure still matters when focusing on values. By emphasizing the objective standard of morality and strengthening the value that they believe in, people can achieve a sense of structure and order to some extent and thus, compensate for the lack of perceived control. Finally, in the context of public emergencies, there is another typical public behavior: irrational buying and hoarding of commodities required for daily life or event protection materials. This phenomenon can also be partially attributed to the performance of the individual need for structure. Due to the lack of a sense of control, individuals need to satisfy their internal needs for control and order through the possession of tangible material resources, which leads to their irrational purchasing behavior. These typical symptoms (belief in conspiracy theories, spreading rumors, moral concerns, and irrational hoarding) can also be explained by other social psychological theories to some extent. For example, by analyzing an individual’s fear of death and the worldview defense process used to overcome this fear, terror management theory can explain an individual’s focus on moral values. Similarly, the uncertainty management theory and meaning maintenance model can also explain some psychological and behavioral reactions of individuals in public emergencies. However, we believe that compensatory control theory has a unique advantage in understanding the above phenomena. This is because it has a clearer definition of antecedents (lack of perceived control) and consequences (need for structure) and shows a wide range of explanatory power and cross-cultural applicability. We suggest that in future studies, people’s psychological and behavioral responses to public emergencies should be further explored from the perspective of compensatory control. In addition, future research should delve deeper to explore this issue from theoretical, empirical, and practical perspectives.

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