Abstract
In a dyad interaction, respecting and obeying those with high status (authority) is highly valued in Chinese societies. Regarding explicit behaviors, Chinese people usually show respect to and obey authority, which we call authoritarian orientation. Previous literature has indicated that Chinese people have a high degree of authoritarian personality, which was considered a national character. However, under Confucian relationalism (Hwang, 2012a), authoritarian orientation is basically an ethical issue, and thus, should not be reduced to the contention of authoritarian personality. Based on Yang's (1993) indigenous conceptualization, Chien (2013) took an emic bottom-up approach to construct an indigenous model of Chinese authoritarian orientation; it represents a “culture-inclusive theory.” However, Chien's model lacks the role of agency or intentionality. To resolve this issue and to achieve the epistemological goal of indigenous psychology (that is, “one mind, many mentalities”), this paper took the “cultural system approach” (Hwang, 2015b) to construct a culture-inclusive theory of authoritarian orientation in order to represent the universal mind of human beings as well as the mentalities of people in a particular culture. Two theories that reflect the universal mind, the “Face and Favor model” (Hwang, 1987) and the “Mandala Model of Self” (Hwang, 2011a,c), were used as analytical frameworks for interpreting Chien's original model. The process of constructing the culture-inclusive theory of authoritarian orientation may represent a paradigm for the construction of indigenous culture-inclusive theories while inspiring further development. Some future research directions are proposed herein.
Highlights
In “My First Teacher,” Lu Xun, a well-known Chinese writer, stated, “In the center of our house, a memorial tablet was worshiped on which heaven (天), earth (地), emperor (君), parents (親), and teacher (師) were written in gold color
As a newly developed theory, a series of studies can be conducted to examine the propositions and hypotheses derived from the authoritarian orientation theory
Under some conditions illustrated in Sections More on “Person”: Cultural Principle of Resistance and Life Wisdom: To Obey Publicly but Disobey Privately, instead of the authoritarianoriented habitus, the actions of yáng fèng yın wéi or resistance based on dang bú yì zé zheng zhı will be undertaken. This means that Chinese people do not always respect or obey the authority
Summary
In “My First Teacher,” Lu Xun, a well-known Chinese writer, stated, “In the center of our house, a memorial tablet was worshiped on which heaven (天), earth (地), emperor (君), parents (親), and teacher (師) were written in gold color. The formation process and psychological components of authoritarian orientation constructed by Chien (2013) illustrate why Chinese people revere and obey authority to a great extent; it cannot explain their resistance to authority in specific situations. If we use theories constructed based on the Western life world to explain Chinese psychological character and behaviors, there will be a gap, but rather an unbridgeable gap This gap may lead to the alienation between the local people and the discipline of psychology in non-Western cultures. In Chinese societies, social interactions in vertical relationships entail special cultural meanings (Hwang, 1995), that is, role ethics in dyadic relationships Most importantly, this is where the authoritarian personality cannot apply. The emic approach with bottom-up strategies is advocated by many indigenous psychologists. Chien (2013) took this approach to construct the formation process and psychological
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