Motivational Tendency Differences Between the Pre-qin Confucianism and Legalism by Psycholinguistic Analysis.

Miaorong Fan,Tingshao Zhu,Feng Huang,Bo Hu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.724093

Abstract

Among the hundred schools of thought that flourished during the pre-Qin era, Confucianism and Legalism are the most important ones as their thoughts cast a longstanding influence on the Chinese culture—cultural-psychological formation of the Chinese people. Most of the previous researches focused on analyzing the similarities and differences of the thoughts of Confucianism and Legalism, and few of them analyzed their motivational tendencies. This paper conducted a word frequency analysis of pre-Qin Confucian and Legalist classics with CC-LIWC, an independently developed program for classical text analysis, and made comparative research into the motivational tendencies of the two schools of thought in terms of psycholinguistic differentials. According to our research results, the use of words representing power (M = 0.1377, SD = 0.0104, p = 0.014) and reward (M = 0.0151, SD = 0.0042, p = 0.037) is more frequent in Legalist classics than in Confucian classics, whereas the use of words representing affiliation (p = 0.066), risk (p = 0.086), and achieve (p = 0.27) shows no significant difference between Confucian and Legalist classics. This paper believes that both Confucianism and Legalism are mainly motivated by power, which is the most distinct feature of their motivational tendencies, and that Legalism is more motivated by power and reward than Confucianism; both Confucianism and Legalism are outcomes of the monarchy society with the former showing the reserved side of monarchy and the latter showing the uninhibited side of monarchy; an effective political methodology is absent in Confucianism, while utilitarianism constitutes the cornerstone of the political philosophy of Legalism.

Highlights

Confucianism and Legalism both came into being during the pre-Qin period.1 Originated in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period (770–221 BC), Confucianism emphasizes caring about others with benevolence (Zhao, 2011) and makes much of relationships between a monarch and his subjects and between a father and his children (Liu and Li, 2014)
This paper compares the motivational tendencies of Confucianism and Legalism by computing the frequencies of five categories of words in pre-Qin Confucian and Legalist classics with CC-LIWC
We find that quantitative analysis by psycholinguistic analysis can better and more quickly identify the differences between motivational tendencies of the two schools of thought, a sharp contrast with qualitative analysis which requires huge volume reading of ancient texts

Summary

Introduction

Confucianism and Legalism both came into being during the pre-Qin period. Originated in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period (770–221 BC), Confucianism emphasizes caring about others with benevolence (Zhao, 2011) and makes much of relationships between a monarch and his subjects and between a father and his children (Liu and Li, 2014). Originated in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period (770–221 BC), Confucianism emphasizes caring about others with benevolence (Zhao, 2011) and makes much of relationships between a monarch and his subjects and between a father and his children (Liu and Li, 2014). Confucianism advocates governing a state with ethics (Ren, 2008), upholds “Ren,” “Yi,” “Li,” “Zhi,” and other moral principles (Liu, 2015), and emphasizes mutual rights and obligations between a monarch and his subjects Representing the ethics of the Chinese agricultural civilization (Ren et al, 2013), Confucianism works to establish a social governance structure based on blood ties and patriarchal relations and pursues benevolent governance by promoting “rules of propriety between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, and elders and juniors,” which is the core political goal of Confucianism.

Methods

Results

Conclusion