Hangzhou, China Parents' Perceptions Of Children's Value Orientations And Classmate Peer Conflict Behaviors In A School Setting

The thesis starts from the perspective of social psychology to explore parents'perceptions in relation to their children's socialization-related goals. China is a traditionally hierarchical and collectivistic society, but due to the present social changes, the values and behaviors parents expect their children to develop have also changed. Parents have endorsed more egalitarian and individualistic values for their children in their child-rearing practice.The thesis addresses our need to understand parents'perceptions in their children's peer conflicts in a constantly changing society in Hangzhou, China. The author has focused on what value orientations and conflict behaviors parents prefer their children to develop in a school setting. Five hypotheses are set forth in this research. The first hypothesis is that parents will prioritize four cultural value orientations in the sequence of horizontal individualism, horizontal collectivism, vertical individualism and vertical collectivism. The second hypothesis is that parents will prioritize among ten conflict behaviors in the sequence of respect, remain calm, problem solve, involve a third party, hold a private discussion, pretend, apology, express, defend and give in. The third, fourth and fifth hypotheses deal with correlations between value orientations and conflict behaviors. The third hypothesis postulates that there is a positive correlation between individualistic values and self-face oriented behaviors. The fourth is that collectivistic values correlate positively with self and mutual-face oriented conflict behaviors. The fifth hypothesis is on the positive correlation between horizontal values and mutual-face oriented conflict behaviors.A broad literature review from both Chinese and English sources serves to review the parents'socialization-related goals and values and children's response in their conflict situations. One hundred and sixty three parents of both primary and secondary school students in Hangzhou, China, responded to a questionnaire on their preferences for the four value orientations and ten conflict behaviors. The collected data were analyzed in both qualitative and quantitative ways to test the five hypotheses. This study finds that parents showed different degrees of preferences for most value orientations and conflict behaviors. Their most preferred value orientation is horizontal individualism, which is followed by horizontal collectivism; the least preferred are two hierarchical value orientations, namely vertical individualism and vertical collectivism, with no statistically significant differences between them. Therefore, the first hypothesis is partially confirmed. In terms of conflict behaviors, the most preferred conflict behaviors are express, remain calm and respect, followed by mutual-face oriented behaviors like hold a private discussion, problem solve, involve a third party and apologize. The behaviors parents disapproved of are both self and other-oriented behaviors like defend, give in. The least preferred behavior is pretend. The differences in their preferences for three conflict behaviors of remain calm, respect and express are not statistically significant, and so do the two conflict behaviors of third party and apologize. As such, the second hypothesis is partially confirmed. As to the third, fourth and fifth hypotheses on the correlations between values and conflict behaviors, the third and fifth hypotheses are confirmed: Individualistic values correlate with self-face oriented conflict behaviors, horizontal values correlate with mutual-face oriented behaviors. The fourth hypothesis is not confirmed. Data shows the correlation between collectivistic values and conflict behaviors depends on the power distance value. Vertical collectivists tend to adopt other and mutual-face oriented behavior while horizontal collectivists tend to adopt mutual-face oriented behavior only and the correlation is comparatively less significant.