Adolescents' Social Representations Of Chinese, American People And China, America

Social Representation (SR) theory has been widely used in European social psychology, but it is seldom studied in China. Starting from SR theory, this thesis is going to study the typical image of Chinese, American, China and America in the adolescents' mind from two countries. The aim of this thesis is mainly to explore the prominent content of the SR, also locate the preferences of them.This thesis was carried out in two stages. First is a focus groups discussion. There are 168 students aged from 9-20 take part in the discussion. They have contributed 1033 word describing people or nation. Through analyzing we eventually get 16 words for people and 10 words for nations to form the questionnaire. The second stage is a test. There are 1004 students from two countries, four age groups, ten schools complete the questionnaire. It was found:The adolescents' SRs on Chinese, American, China and America are multi-dimensional. This thesis gets identical dimensions. There are personality, morality and bearing dimensions in the SRs on Chinese and American. There are integrated national power, social visage and cultural resources dimensions in the SRs on China and America. The Chinese adolescents showed references on Chinese people. So do the American 19 younger. The Chinese 10-years-old and 13-years-old groups adolescents showed reference on China and the 16-years-old and the 19-years-old groups showed opposite reference.There are magnificent differences from age groups. This thesis find similar developing trends when representing Chinese and China, and also for American and America. This thesis gets central system and peripheral system for every object. The central system is changing depending on the size and sampling of the group.Chinese adolescents think Chinese people are most like him, and then is the Korea and Japanese. The American 19 younger think American people is most like him, then is the British, French and Germany.