›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3): 722-730.

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The Characteristics of Chinese People’s System of Values and it’s “Dialectical Focus” Feature: Applicability of the Schwartz’s Value Theory (2012) with Chinese People

  

  • Received:2018-12-04 Revised:2019-06-18 Online:2019-05-20 Published:2019-05-20
  • Contact: Ling LI

中国人价值观特点及其与社会主义核心价值观的契合性

金盛华1,李玲2,车宏生3,何立国4   

  1. 1. 福州大学
    2. 西北师范大学
    3. 北京师范大学心理学院
    4. 深圳大学
  • 通讯作者: 李玲

Abstract: Values, as guiding principles of human life, are influential in human’s attitudinal and behavioral decisions. Schwartz’s theory of values is a milestone and has been frequently cited and adopted in most values study during the past two decades. This study is to verify applicability of the Schwartz’s value theory (Schwartz et al., 2012) with Chinese people. The latest version of Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) was translated into Chinese version and 2569 Chinese people from diverse regions were measured with PVQ Chinese version. The results showed that the values structure of Chinese people fit well with the theoretical pattern of the Schwartz’s theory. The average Cronbach’s ? of 19 values is 0.66, ranging from 0.54 for power-dominance to 0.80 for security-societal. The results of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) well fit the Schwartz’ theoretical model. Moreover, the study aimed at describing the characteristics of Chinese people’s system of values, especially dynamic relations among the different types of values. The results suggested that Chinese people ranked conformity-rules, benevolence-caring, benevolence-dependability, security-societal, and security-personal at the forefront, while power-resources and power-dominance were put at the end. On the second-tier value dimensions, Chinese people expressed more openness and social focus values than conservation and personal focus values, emphasized on self-transcendence and growth values than self-enhancement and self-protection values. These tendencies show that rapid economic development has already influenced values of Chinese. These findings are consistent with Inglehart’s prediction about economic development is coherent with cultural change. It is worth noting that on the “personal focus-social focus” dimension, the positive correlations among personal focus values are not strong as prediction based on Schwartz’s theory, but correlations among social focus values are pretty high, which well fit with the theory’s assumption. The most impressive results are correlations among social- and personal- oriented values. There is a hypothesis in Schwartz’s theory that the more any two distant values at either direction in the value circle, the more antagonistic they are. Interestingly, some values that emerge in opposite direction in the circular order which supposed the most conflict relations appeared strong positive correlations, such as self-direction-thought ( belongs to personal focus values) vs. tradition/conformity-rules ( belongs to social focus values), and achievement ( belongs to personal focus values) vs. benevolence ( belongs to social focus values). In Chinese people’s rank order of values, power-dominance and power-resources are right at the bottom, and it had nothing to do with other values at the same time. It is not only against presumed value relations of the Schwartz’s theory, but also different from many ideas about Chinese people’s features proposed by distinguished scholars. One reasonable explanation about the contradiction is that the items to measure power values are not good for Chinese people due to subtle cultural tradition. The author suggests that values about power in China have a nature of duality, which means that there are inconsistent between value expressed and value selection in action. So there is a challenging task to find a way to measure people’s real value orientation with behaviors. On the other hand, Chinese people show some integration among social- and personal-oriented values, which is a particularly typical feature announced by many well-known experts. This feature is most pronounced in the achievement value, which showed a stronger correlation with benevolence-caring and benevolence-dependability. It is reasonable to believe that it comes from Confucianism beliefs about the Doctrine of the Mean. The author proposed a new concept of “dialectical focus” to emphasize such tendencies of Chinese people with relationship of values.

Key words: Schwartz, value, collectivism, personal-focus, social-focus

摘要: 本研究采用汉化的Schwartz《肖像价值观问卷》(2012)测量了2569人的大样本,以验证Schwartz新价值观理论及其工具在中国的适用性及中国人价值观结构特点。结果表明,19种价值观内部一致性系数平均为0.66,范围从“支配权力”价值观的0.54到“社会安全”价值观的0.80,验证性因素分析各项指标均达到可接受水平;中国人个人定向类价值观之间的相关关系与原理论假设不相符合;个人定向类和社会定向类价值观之间,出现了多项位置相对、在原理论中假定为低相关的价值观呈高相关关系。表明Schwartz等(2012)价值观理论虽从测量学角度适用中国人群,但其不能预测和解释中国人价值观的“个人”与“社会”辩证统一与交叉融合特点。

关键词: 价值观, Schwartz, 集体主义, 个人定向, 社会定向