Historical Sustenance Style and Social Orientations in China: Chinese Mongolians Are More Independent Than Han Chinese

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Ivana Stojcic¹  Qingwang Wei³  Xiaopeng Ren¹ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences;Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences;The Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China;The Laboratory of The Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China

关键词: Han Chinese;    Mongolian;    ecology;    interdependence;    independence;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00864

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In this study, we examined the Chinese Han and Mongolian, two ethnic groups that belong to the same national and geographic regions but vary in their degrees of social interdependence and independence. We assumed that the Mongolian, who have traditionally been known as a herding community, exhibit a greater independent social orientation compared to the Han Chinese, who have traditionally been known as an agrarian community. Through three different studies we used the explicit measurement of self-construal, implicit cultural task of self – inflation and the practice of name-giving (i.e., baby names as a cultural product) to test our hypothesis. The obtained results revealed that compared to Han Chinese, Mongolian scored higher on independent – self subscale, had greater levels of self-symbolic inflation and were less likely to give common names to their babies. These findings suggest that Mongolians are more independent than Han Chinese. In view of that, the present study contributes to a better understanding of the complexity of Chinese culture in terms of interdependence and independence, and provides further support for historical sustenance theory.

【 授权许可】

CC BY