Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The public psychological service system’s objective, whom it should serve, and what service it should provide are systematically analyzed with the application of the decision-making approach suggested by the system. The construction of the public psychological service system should adopt a strategy, where different research perspectives, multi-disciplines, and different research focuses are fully integrated. This includes an integration of individual, situational and social perspectives, an integration of foundation and applied psychological disciplines, and an integration of academic research and societal applications. Social psychology is the core building block of the public psychological service system. To develop an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms and processes of social governance, it is essential to integrate the approaches of both psychological social psychology and sociological social psychology. The construction of the public psychological service system is to build an enabling psychological environment that promots social development. It needs to take the perspective of social development and should explore the psychological pathways for social development in undertaking the task of multidisciplinary integration and social governance.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Scholars have approached social psychology from two perspectives: a sociological one and a psychological one. Although two perspectives have mostly developed in a parallel way, both has paid much attention into a common area: societal changes and their psychological impacts. Past sociological research on Chinese societal changes has focused on two aspects: changes in society or social structure, and changes in people. The former mainly involves urbanization, social class, social mobility, and family structure; the latter mainly involves Chinese experience, social mentality, group psychology, and organizational psychology. Research suggests that while modern individualism has been on the rise, traditional collectivism has been declining. Compared with psychological approach, sociological approach tends to adopt more emic concepts and qualitative analyses, pays more attention to group psychology as well as the influences of politics and policy, and employs more macro-historical perspective. In future research, Chinese social psychologists from the two perspectives need to learn from and collaborate with each other, ultimately achieving a better understanding of the change of Chinese people and Chinese society.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： This paper reviews past research on temporal information focus and lay theories of change among Chinese people and discusses their theoretical and practical implications. Temporal information focus refers to the breadth of focus people direct to temporal information, pertaining to the past, present and future. People with a broader temporal information focus attend to a more extensive range of information along the temporal dimension. Past research has shown that, compared to North Americans, Chinese people attend more to the past, as well as the future, demonstrating a broader temporal information focus. Relative to North Americans, they judge the past as more relevant to the present, perceive the past and future to be closer to the present, and hold information pertaining to the distant past and future in a more accessible state within their minds. Such broader temporal focus among Chinese people has important impacts on other psychological processes. For example, it contributes to Chinese individual’s greater sense of self-continuity over time. Self-continuity refers to the sense of perceiving oneself as a unity that transcends the present and extends to the past and future. With various approaches, research has demonstrated that Chinese participants have a greater sense of self-continuity across time, from the past to the present, and then to the future. In addition, Chinese participants also show a greater sense of self-continuity across generations, in that they tend to think they are the extension of their grandparents and parents, which will continue into their children and grandchildren. Broader temporal focus among Chinese people may also contribute to their lay theories (or beliefs) of change - that is, their beliefs about how events develop over time. Attending to a broader range of temporal information may make it easy to identify changes over time. Relative to North Americans, Chinese people hold a more cyclical belief about change, as they expect events to change in a continuous manner, and such change can take place from one extreme to the other and vice versa (e.g., from good to bad, and then from bad to good). Such lay theories of change start to emerge in school-age children and increase with age. Such beliefs apply to predictions of other people’s behaviors, as well as predictions of one’s own experience (such as happiness throughout life). These predictions have impacts in real life (e.g., stock market predictions and decisions). They may also influence how people perceive and respond to adversity in real life. For example, Chinese participants tend to conceptualize suffering in both negative and positive terms. Thus, compared to North Americans, Chinese participants are more likely to see the positive aspects within negative experiences, and will consequently respond more positively to adverse life situations such as a pandemic. This paper considers potential factors contributing to the broader temporal information focus among Chinese people, proposes a cultural psychological model for temporal focus, and discusses fruitful directions for future research.
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