Influence of Confucianism and Taoism on self-construal and thinking style: an intervention study

ABSTRACT

Using original texts of Confucian and Taoist primary classics as materials, we conducted an eight-week educational intervention experiment combining classroom teaching and post-class reflection as cultural manipulation. Ninety-four sixth-grade students from three parallel mainstream classes were randomly assigned to three intervention groups, comprising two experimental groups (Confucian and Taoist values interventions) and a control group (natural science intervention). The results suggest that the Confucian intervention had a positive effect on interdependent self and holistic thinking, the Taoist intervention had a positive effect on independent self and holistic thinking, and the natural science intervention promoted analytical thinking.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-construal
• thinking style
• Confucian value
• Taoist value
• educational intervention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants reported in this manuscript were approved by the ethics committee of Nanjing Normal University (China).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KTMXG.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KTMXG.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Buddhism also influenced the Chinese cultural mind after the Tang dynasty, along with its integration with Chinese culture (Feng, 2011). The Buddhist view of the self is guided by the achievement of a state of “non-self” by breaking self-attachment, a theological concept that is difficult to unpack in layman’s terms and beyond the scope of the present empirical study (Wang & Wang, 2021).

2. The present study did not use Buddhism as an intervention condition, as Buddhist thought is too religious to be taught in secular classes in basic education. Furthermore, it is difficult to control irrelevances because of the multifarious canonical texts and various sects of Buddhism.

3. In selecting materials, we intentionally avoided statements that were incompatible with current universal values. For example, statements involving values such as obsession with hierarchy, blind obedience to parents and elders, and gender discrimination in Confucian thought, and statements about anti-intellectualism, obscurantism, and mystical thinking in Taoist thought, were avoided. Although these statements may carry significant weight in Confucian and Taoist thinking, we believed it to be contrary to educational ethics to include these ideas in the intervention.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Grant No. 2021WK132), awarded to Zhen-Dong Wang.

Notes on contributors

Zhen-Dong Wang

Zhen-Dong Wang, PhD, is a lecturer in psychology at the School of Basic Medical Sciences at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. His primary research interests focus on self, wisdom, Chinese cultural psychology and analytical psychology.

Yu-Ling Wang

Yu-Ling Wang is a Research Assistant in Positive Psychology Lab at Tsinghua University. His research focuses on cultural thinking mode, wisdom, meaning, value, and aesthetic style. He is also interested in machining learning and big data analysis.

Qian Zhang

Qian Zhang, PhD, is a research assistant professor in Naval Medical Center at Naval Medical University. Her research interest mainly focused on cognitive psychology, and psycholinguistics.

Feng-Yan Wang

Feng-Yan Wang, PhD, is a professor at the School of Psychology at Nanjing Normal University. He mainly engages in Chinese cultural psychology, wisdom psychology, and psychology of moral education.