关键词: 孝, 儒家文化心理学, 孝道, 孝行, 本土心理学

Abstract:

Filial piety (xiao) refers to the proper way to treat parents, an important concept in Chinese culture. Since the advent of the New Culture Movement in China, some people have criticized filial piety, whereas others still advocate it. The possible basis for this disagreement may be that filial piety is comprised of both good and dark sides. Psychological researchers have conducted empirical studies exploring the factor structure of filial piety. However, past research in the realm of filial piety has had some limitations, such as unsatisfactory reliability and validity, confound of subjective researcher intent, and omissions of important factors. I predict that there exists more factors inside filial piety and that the different factors are correlated with different criterion.

Here, I have tested an operational conceptualization of filial piety. Specifically, in the pilot study, items were generated in two ways. First, 50 items were adapted from four Chinese philosophical classics, namely the Analects of Confucius, the Works of Mencius, the Classic of Filial Piety, and the Book of Rites. Second, 56 participants were then recruited to list 5-10 characteristics of filial piety, with a total of 337 individually generated descriptors that I collected, which were then grouped into 48 categories by a psychology student blind to the hypothesis, who was asked to simplify the redundancies. In Study 1, I used exploratory factor analysis to construct a measure of filial piety (N = 633). In Study 2, I used confirmatory factor analysis and tested the correlations of each dimension of filial piety and criterion variables, including family self-concept, family resilience, parent bonding styles, inadequate parent-child boundaries, self-supporting personality, and compliance, to validate the structure (N = 396 and 206). In Study 3, I asked the participants to indicate to what extent each item in the scale agreed with their ideal (s) of filial piety (N = 221). I further asked those with children older than 10 years to indicate to what extent each item agreed with their ideal expectations of how their children—of any age—should treat them (N = 213).

The results demonstrated that filial piety is composed of nine factors: respecting and installing parents, obeying parents, being kind and pleasant to parents, adhering to principles without letting parents feel humiliated, accompanying parents, making a name for oneself and letting parents feel honored, yearning for parents, not interfering with parents, and dissuading parents. The nine-factor structure has good reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, criterion-related validity, and content validity. Different factors have different patterns of correlations with criterion variables. After controlling for covariates, all dimensions of filial piety positively correlated with family self-concept and family resilience. Parental care positively correlated with respecting and installing parents, being kind and pleasant to parents, accompanying parents, and yearning for parents. Parental indifference negatively correlated with the above mentioned variables. Likewise, parental autonomy negatively correlated with obeying parents. Lack of parent-child boundaries and the use of psychological control positively correlated with obeying parents and yearning for parents, whereas it correlated negatively with respecting and installing parents. A self-supporting personality positively correlated with respecting, installing, and dissuading parents. An interpersonal, self-supporting personality negatively correlated with yearning for parents. Compliance positively correlated with obeying parents and yearning for them but correlated negatively with dissuading them.

These findings help to understand the internal structure of filial piety and differentiate its good side from its dark side.

Key words: xiao, Confucianism cultural psychology, filial piety, filial behavior, indigenous psychology