BOOK REVIEW
Lifting One of the Last Bamboo Curtains: Review of The Psychology of the Chinese People. Michael Harris Bond, ed. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1986, 354 pps. For all the attention devoted by social scientists to Chinese society during this century, one subject has attracted less interest and made less progress than all the rest: namely, psychology. There has been a tradition of psychological research, but it has been a minor tributary, cut off from the mainstream of China studies and at the same time peripheral to the tremendous engine of psychological research in the West. One reason doubtless is the difficulty of studying psychological processes generally and those in non-Western societies in particular. Another, more important issue, is that Chinese culture itself is resistent to the mode of enquiry that examines psychological processes in a discursive, abstract academic framework. The Chinese traditional culture is rich in indirect, subtle, metaphoric means of expressing emotion. Precise demarkation of inner emotional states and empirical study of ego-centric processes do not loom large in this socio-centric tradition. Indigenous Chinese medical thinking has been holistic and somatopsychic, embedding psychosocial issues in a bodily idiom. Indigenous Chinese philosophical speculation articulated personal questions in a language of moral aspirations and social inter: relationships. Modern Chinese studies in the West also emphasized other topics: politics, economics, history, literature, social change. In the past decade this bamboo curtain, one of the last to be touched, has been lifted, especially through research by psychologists in overseas Chinese communities (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and among North American Chinese). Although interesting research in several psychological fields (e.g., medical and educational psychology) was initiated in the China mainland prior to the mid-1960's, the Cultural Revolution brought it to an abrupt, decade-long close. The fledgling profession of psychology was devasted. Only in the past eight years has research begun again, hesitantly and in well-established educational, industrial and cognitive fields. Students of Chinese culture need to know to what extent standard psychological models can be applied to the Chinese quarter of the population of the globe. Are there unique patterns of experience and its modes among Chinese? Can these patterns be systematically investigated through Culture, Medicineand Psychiatry 11 (1987) 521--528. © 1987 by D. ReidelPublishing Company.
522
BOOK REVIEW
methods sensitive to cultural differences? Can they be synthesized into major theories of Chinese emotion and behavior? These are also questions that are of interest to anthropologists, psychiatrists and psychologists involved in cross-cultural studies of emotion, cognition, and psychopathology. The book under review is a major contribution to this subject. Nine contributors, six of whom are ethnically Chinese, including seven from Hong Kong and two from Taiwan, canvass the primary literature in detailed review chapters on Chinese patterns of socialization, perceptual processes, cognition, personality, psychopathology, social psychology and organizational behavior. I know of no other reference work that provides such substantial, state of the art reviews of the major research issues, findings and their implications. This is not a book for readers who lack formal knowledge of psychology. The chapters are pitched at a sophisticated level and dissect research studies in such detail that the general reader will find at least several rough going. But that will not, I hope, deter those interested in Chinese culture and cross-cultural studies generally from working their way through this important collection. For there is much to be garnered from a close reading of these chapters. Two of the chapters are outstanding by any criteria. Yang Kuo-shu, Chairman of the Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, reviews research studies of attitude, motivation, temperament and their changes among Chinese. He critically summarizes research on the Chinese pattern of motives that indicates relatively strong Social Abasement Change, Achievement, Endurance, Intraception, Nurturance and Order scores, and moderately strong scores on Autonomy, Deference, Dominance and Succorance. Individual Achievement, Affiliation, Aggression, Exhibition, Heterosexuality and Power scores are low. This contemporary pattern, he shows, is a continuation of traditional Chinese motivational style with a collectivist orientation. Yet unlike the classical pattern there are new elements indicating what he calls "a flavour of the modern individualistic outlook." This includes a need for Change and Autonomy. Yang is not slow to point out a/key problem with this and much of the other data on personality: theyderive primarily from student samples in overseas Chinese communities like Taiwan and Hong Kong that have undergone rapid modernization and been importantly influenced by the West. Hence it is unclear to what extent this pattern holds for the great bulk of the Chinese population on the China mainland who are neither university educated nor deeply exposed to Western values. A review of more than 20 studies on Chinese attitudes shows that Chinese students in contemporary Taiwan exhibit a profile of values that
BOOK REVIEW
523
consists of inner development, individualism, future perspective and mastery over nature. Yang stresses the radical departure of this value pattern from the traditional Chinese pattern of inner development, collectivism, past perspective and submission to nature described in earlier studies. There is evidence of both socio-centric and ego=centric values. The question is whether this pattern is the direction youth in China, who have had rather different socialization and societal experiences, will follow in future? But one aspect of Yang's findings seems incontrovertible. Individualism exists in Chinese culture and is not simply a Western import, as a reading of traditional Chinese poets like Qu Yuan confirms. There is a special type of individualism within collectivity and Yang is on to it. Early questionnaire studies of temperament indicated that Chinese scored higher on emotionality and neuroticism than American norms. Some more recent research has replicated this finding. In marked contrast, observational studies of Chinese and American children show that Chinese children are calmer and more passive. Drawing on published critiques of these studies, Yang argues that the positive attitude towards sex taboos, deprecation of itself, interpersonal prudence or suspicion, and meditative absent-mindedness are not indicators of emotionality or neuroticism, but rather the result of "cultural differences in the specific and special meanings of some common behavior patterns in the two contrasted traditions." Yang does suggest, however, that more convincing culturally sensitive research confirms that Chinese are cautious, restrained, patient, self-contained, modest, non-aggressive, and less natural than Americans, a temperamental pattern of self-restraint and self-examinAtion in service of interpersonal harmony that contrasts with a more impulsive Western pattern. He presents the recent evidence that aspects of this pattern are observable in babies and therefore are probably, at least in part, genetic. Yang also presents data on the practical mindedness and holistic cognitive pattern of Chinese that come from projective testing. He examines these and the other findings in a "cultural-ecological" model that relates them to core aspects of the traditional Chinese agricultural social structure: hierarchial organization, collective functioning, generalized familization, structural tightness and social homogeneity. He indicates their relationship to central Chinese socialization practices: dependency training, conformity training, modesty training, self-suppression training, self-contentment training, punishment preference, shaming strategy, present-centeredness and multiple parenting. In light of this model, he canvasses the evidence for change in aspects of personality, relating such change to social changes in Chinese society, especially Taiwan. Best of all, Yang places emphasis on studies published in Chinese which are not accessible to Western readers
524
BOOK R E V I E W
and therefore have not influenced Western reviews of this subject. He also calls for a sinicization of psychological research in Chinese society making it more relevant to Chinese culture. If the reader wants to know the state of the art, this is the place to begin. The second outstanding contribution is by Michael Harris Bond, a senior social psychologist at Chinese University in Hong Kong and editor of this volume, and Hwang Kwang-kuo, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University. Their review of the social psychology of Chinese surveys models of Chinese social behavior, contrasting American and indigenous Chinese theories. Several of the latter are likely to be novel to Western readers. Bond and Hwang attempt to locate the Chinese in a cross-cultural grid of collectivism -- individualism and large versus small power distance based on a multi national empirical study conducted by Hofstede in the early 1980s. This is a provocative framework for grouping societies and individuals. Had the authors stopped here they would have made an interesting contribution, but they do much more. They review social psychological research in the West (largely the United States) on person perception, the recognition of emotions, attribution processes and related topics. For each topic they review research conducted with Chinese subjects and in Chinese settings. They then examine research on interpersonal processes: interpersonal attraction, face, self-disclosure, leadership, conformity, and distributive justice, ethnic affirmation, and aggression-conflict. Bond and Hwang canvass what is known about these variables among Chinese and what contribution this knowledge makes to general theory. Their analysis of "face" is particularly provocative, suggesting that the Chinese emic concept provides a better understanding of universal cross-cultural factors than existing psychological concepts. These mini reviews of key subjects are remarkable for how much they have to say about routine social behavior in Chinese culture. Students of Chinese culture will benefit from a second and even third reading of this rich paper. I have read no previous analyses of Chinese behavior that managed to be so well grounded in the local cultural context and at the same time so theoretically sophisticated. The authors' analysis of the typical structure of Chinese discourse, for example, is a masterful summary of social science research on Chinese interpersonal communication that also manages to be strikingly innovative by presenting indigenous concepts such as ''facing reality," "self-assertion," and "perseverance" and using these as vehicles to relate the latest social psychological concepts and research to these themes. If there is a problem with this chapter it is that the authors cover too many topics in too short a space even for a long article.
BOOK REVIEW
525
A third interesting contribution, though not of quite the same high academic calibre, is the chapter by Gordon Redding and Gilbert Wong on the psychology of Chinese organizational behavior. Being unfamiliar with this subject, I was surprised how very much is known about the structure and functioning of Chinese businesses in Hong Kong. This chapter ought to be required reading in business school courses on industrial East Asia. The authors develop Kahn's post-Confucian hypothesis (namely, that Confucian cultural influences create values that support business success) to explain the success of East Asian businesses, but they take this idea in a rather distinctive direction, showing the relationship of organizational structure, management processes and Chinese culture. They disclose both the less well-known weaknesses as well as the better known strengths of the Chinese "didactic" patterns of leadership and decision making in small family businesses. They examine the role of values of social stability, face, obligation and loyalty in the management process, as well as the construction of familism and materialism to conclude convincingly that there is a special Chinese form of organizational behavior. Rumjahn Hoosain of the Chinese University in Hong Kong has written an important if less successful discussion of perceptual processes. The problem doubtless is more that of the status of the field than of Hoosain's analysis. What work has been conducted on visual acuity, directional scanning, eye movements, color coding, field dependence, cognitive style, handedness and lateralization, and reading disability is at such an early stage with predictable problems in methods that it is difficult to come to specific conclusions that are of significance beyond the very narrow research frameworks themselves. Nonetheless there is, as Hoosain points out, considerable support for "different perceptual and reading processes for the Chinese, which relate to their distinctive orthography." Hoosain's summary is that the "Chinese . . . seem to conceive of and manipulate visual forms differently from others who have other script in their language . . . the language effects in the present case would be more pervasive than those originally conceived of by Sapir and Whorl -- they go beyond the immediate effect of the conceptualization depicted by the language items in question and extend to general information processing." This greatly important conclusion, unfortunately, is buried in the details of so many studies that readers may miss the forest for the trees. It would have been better to have begun with this statement, then worked backward to understanding its sources. This is a problem shared by several of the chapters -- such as those on socialization and cognition -- which, unlike the exemplary pieces already discussed, review study after study, submerging the reader in a sea of
526
BOOK REVIEW
detail, without providing an integrating summation of what all this work means. Rather than tell us about the psychology of the Chinese, they tell us about the doing of psychological research on Chinese -- a topic of much more limited significance. Because of my own experience, I was particularly interested in reading the chapter by Fanny Cheung, a leading clinical psychologist in Hong Kong, on psychopathology. Cheung has made a number of important contributions to this topic. These are highlighted. But they do not bear the full weight of what readers will expect to be a much more wide ranging review of this central topic. Thus, few of the large number of important epidemiological and clinical studies are discussed. The important topic of culture-bound disorders is not given the extensive survey one might have expected, given the thoroughness of the other chapters. Cheung provides this topic with a thoroughly psychological orientation which in some ways is quite refreshing. Few psychiatric clinicians are likely to be familiar with the material she presents on locus of control, coping strategies, socialization and family dynamics. And her description of social change and social stressors and their relation to the mental health of Chinese is sober and revealing. Cheung notes that her own work with the MMPI among Chinese discloses that if Chinese results are interpreted by American norms the Chinese appear more "depressed" than Americans. She suggests sagely that given this baseline and the difference in Chinese norms, the affective features of depression can be understood to be less readily recognized by persons and family, a thesis for which there is much clinical support. But Cheung does not review the artifact introduced by using an American measurement technique, originally developed in mid-century with a small group of Middle Western white Americans, in a radically different milieu. Surely this contributes to confounding the findings. Cheung's own research has been carried out largely with university students in Hong Kong -- as I have already noted a very special sample (highly educated, secularized and likely to be Western-oriented) -- and therefore unlikely to be representative of the great mass of the Chinese peoples. Cheung's handling of the Chinese use of physical idioms of distress to express psychosocial problems seems overly defensive, as if she believes the Chinese were being unjustly accused of reprehensible behavior. She is dismissive of the large amount of clinical work on this subject. Cheung fails to recognize that this phenomenon occurs world-wide, including in the West, and that it is not simply a function of situational expectations in the clinic. The result is a rather thin gruel -- since the more culturally pertinent findings are not elaborated. The upshot is a different view of the Chinese than we obtain
BOOK REVIEW
527
from the more successful chapters. Disordered Chinese emerge from these pages as deculturated, healthy students. Cheung simply confounds normal samples, samples of patients with distress but no specific psychiatric disorders, and samples of patients with serious psychiatric disease. She ends up calling for a peculiarly Chinese way of configuring psychopathology, yet, disconcertingly, this is just the orientation her chapter does not demonstrate. Any collection of papers is likely to be uneven, and this volume is no exception. The chief weakness is not this, however. The first problem is the lack of introductory or concluding chapters that attempt to integrate the very different contributions and reveal the golden thread tying each together. If the Bond and Hwang paper came first it might have accomplished at least some of this. A second problem is the tendency, in the less effective chapters, to review the details of large numbers of individual studies without interpreting them in a framework broader than that of narrow empirical projects. Those chapters are organized by the subject headings of the current research studies, not by the large questions that will interest readers. Finally, there is an expectable, and to my mind not wholly unacceptable, ethnocentrism that may put off non-Chinese readers. This would be a shame, for what this volume accomplishes is a display of the rich wares of research on Chinese that turns on the central tension of studies by Chinese investigators, often published in Chinese, with a Chinese audience in mind, contributed to a scientific discipline that is strongly based on Western models and value orientations. The result is a kind of de-colonialized psychology all too rare in my reading of the crosscultural literature (see for India, Ashis Nandy 1983). Not an unimpressive achievement! For the expert or those with an interest in the person in Chinese culture, this volume will be an indispensable reference source. This may be less the sinicization of psychology than the psychology of sinicization, but there can be little doubt a window has been opened on a previously poorly known, though surprisingly large, body of studies which at their best ground our understanding of the person in Chinese culture in analytic frameworks more pertinent to that subject. This volume is unlikely to be the final word on the subject, yet from here on it will be one of the key starting points for empirical and theoretical enquiry. When we have companion volumes for other cultures we will go well beyond both Westem oriented models of professional psychology and the tendency of anthropologists to stop at the level of the local meanings of psychological processes without studying those processes per se. Rather we will have the basis for a more culturally valid psychology that may transform the leading models and methods of that central discipline which then would make it of
528
BOOK REVIEW
greater significance to anthropology, cross-cultural psychiatry and area studies.
Harvard University
ARTHUR KLEINMAN REFERENCE
Nandy, Ashis 1983 The Intimate Enemy. New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress.
