Chinese People's Gift Ideas And Influencing Factors

The Chinese nation is famous as "a nation of etiquette". For thousands of years of Chinese nation evolution, Courtesy Culture profoundly and extensively influences Chinese thought and behavior. "Courtesy demands reciprocity. It is not propriety not to give out but to receive, or vice versa." This is the customs of ancient Chinese society and even as our modern society known; meanwhile it is the interpersonal communication guidelines in daily life. "Courtesy demands reciprocity" not only means the etiquette of reciprocity, but also means the people using goods and gifts as intermediary to mutual association or interpersonal communication by exchanging gifts. In daily life, this kind of interpersonal communication by exchanging gifts implement through "gift-giving".This study is in the aspect of psychology, especially in the level of folk psychology to investigate Chinese unofficial, unscholastic and not prescribed in ancient books'behavior of gift-giving. To the traditional "courtesy" as the entry point, with the China's unique cultural background of Courtesy Culture to investigate the Chinese people's implicit structure and prototype of gift-giving. In order to reveal the minds of the Chinese people about the "gift-giving" behavior, we try to verify the factors which affect the Chinese judgment on the function of the behavior of gift-giving,Study1:The research was conducted by free association, content analysis and cluster analysis, in order to investigate the Chinese people's implicit structure of gift-giving. After the generalization, the results show that:1) There are five facets of the representation of gift giving concept:bribery and sanction; intention and causality; modus vivendi; interpersonal custom; gift.2) There exist distinct gender, academic background, only-child or not and living areas differences.Study2:This study was based on Rosch's prototype theory, in order to find out the prototype of the concept of gift-giving in China's cultural background. After the generalization, the results show that:1) Chinese people's cognitive prototype of gift-giving consists of 9 parts, including example of gift, relying on gifts for success, achieving the goal by gifts, continuing the human feelings by gifts, enhancing the feelings between peoples by gifts, respecting the old and sages, attitude about the gift-giving, others and nonsense.2) The typical example of prototype of gift-giving is different in gender.3) Some factors are different on distinct gender, marital status and living areas.Study3:This study was conducted by an experiment of different story situations, which are verified with the relationship between giver and recipient and the results of behavior can affect people's judgment of gift-giving behavior. The results show that:1) The result of promotion and the relationship between giver and recipient can significantly influence people judging the relevance between gift-giving behavior and the result of event.2) The relationship between giver and recipient can significantly influence people judge the obsequious motivation of gift-giving, and the result of promotion and relationship making significant interactive effects on the judging of obsequious motivation of gift-giving.3) The relationship has significantly effects on people judging the fellowship between giver and recipient.4) The result of promotion and the relationship between giver and recipient have different effects on evaluation of expressive and instrumental gift-giving.In all, three studies of this thesis are done in the aspect of psychology. The aims of this study are as following:firstly, this thesis makes people gain a better understanding of gift-giving, inheritance the traditional culture and building the harmonious society. Second, it broadens the road and the horizon of the psychology localization, in order to form the theory of human communication which has Chinese characteristics.