Confucian ideal personality traits (Junzi personality): Exploration of psychological measurement

Abstract: Confucian philosophy is a vital key in understanding China. The Confucianism classics have probably exercised a greater influence on Chinese people than any other literary or philosophical work. Junzi is the central focus of The Analects (Confucius’ collected sayings and the most significant text in Confucianism), and it may be the best method to comprehend The Analects. Junzi is not only just a historical notion but also a mainstream academic subject in contemporary China. In this study, we defined Junzi personality as ideal personality traits in Chinese culture (particularly Confucianism) and utilized modern psychological approaches to shed light on the operational conceptualization of Junzi personality. First, we collected all the Confucius’ statements about Junzi personality from The Analects and utilized them to create a preliminary questionnaire with 80 items written in modern Chinese. Second, we asked 499 Chinese participants to self-report how much they endorsed each item, to describe themselves on a 7-point scale, before performing exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring and a Promax rotation. Third, we invited 319 and 663 participants to fill in a 30-item questionnaire and conducted two confirmatory factor analyses. Lastly, we examined criterion-related validity using several correlation analyses on two samples of 202 and 233 participants. The findings revealed that the Junzi personality is composed of five factors: (A) “wisdom, benevolence, and courage,” describing the traits of people who have rational attitudes that give full play to the autonomy of their minds and wise attitudes that illuminate things and are able to put these into practice; (B) “respectfulness and propriety,” describing the traits of people who maintain respectful, humble, cautious, and honest attitudes toward social norms, social order, and social life; (C) “conversancy with righteousness and cherishment of benign rule,” describing the traits of people who know that they should act appropriately and maintain their inherent goodness; (D) “refraining from what should not be done,” describing the traits of people who understand the boundaries and bottom lines of their behaviors and do not violate them; (E) “self-cultivation rather than contentions with others,” describing the traits of people who find problems in themselves and endeavor to change the status quo when managing transactions, solving problems, and encountering difficulties or setbacks and understand that contentions with others do not help solve problems. The confirmatory factor analyses results indicated that the Inventory of Junzi Personality in Confucius’ Thought had good reliability, construct validity, and discrimination validity. Correlation analyses revealed that Junzi personality was significantly positively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, Chinese values, self-flexibility, cooperative personality tendencies, and prosocial inclinations. Moreover, Junzi personality was significantly negatively correlated with neuroticism, discordance between self and experience, self-rigidity, and excessive competitiveness. These findings supplemented and improved understandings of Junzi personality meanings and internal structures and offered a reliable and valid assessment for quantitative empirical Junzi personality research."