The Conflict Between Materialism And Confucian Traditional Values

Since reform and opening,Chinese society and economy have changed greatly,promoting the transition of social values.Most outstandingly,with the surge of commercial economy,Chinese traditional values have encountered intense impact,whereas materialism has germinated rapidly.Based on this realistic background and values conflict theory,the current research explored a fact that Chinese college students of the time could be suffering from mental confusion which resulted from the coexistence of materialism and Confucian traditional values.In study 1,449 undergraduate students were investigated to revise Richins and Dawson’s Material Values Scale(MVS)and to examine the relationship between materialism and Confucian traditional values.The results showed that the revised MVS had three components similar to the original scale and good reliability and validity.Moreover,materialism was negatively correlated to Confucian traditional values,which implied that they were opposed to or conflicted with each other,thus providing the premise of values conflict theory which would be applied in the subsequent studies.Based on study 1,study 2 and 3 both used experimental method,placing subjects in dilemmatic settings in which they faced different values-based choices,and using two different measurement indexes of dependent variable,to synthetically examine the interaction between materialism and Confucian traditional values on psychological tension or anxiety.In study 2,114 undergraduate students participated in the experiment.A short State Anxiety Inventory was used to measure subjects’ tension or anxiety when they faced dilemmatic settings.The results of ANCOVA showed that the interaction between materialism and Confucian traditional values was significant.Specifically,among subjects who were high in Confucian traditional values,there was a marked increase in the level of psychological tension or anxiety when moving from the low to high materialism groups.In contrast,for those low in Confucian traditional values,the level of psychological tension or anxiety didn’t appear to vary as a function of their level of material values.Besides,the main effects of these two values were both significant,that is,for those who were high in materialism or low in Confucian traditional values,they experienced high level of psychological tension or anxiety.Considering that the State Anxiety Inventory might not be able to measure subjects’ state of mind actually and exactly,study 3 used a polygraph to register subjects’ psychological and physiological reactions when they answered questions about the dilemmatic settings,in order to provide objective physiological indexes which could represent psychological tension or anxiety.We selected 46 undergraduate students in accord with the experimental requirement as participants.The results of ANCOVA using galvanic skin response(GSR)as dependent variable showed that the interaction between materialism and Confucian traditional values was significant.Specifically,among subjects who were high in Confucian traditional values,the GSR elevated markedly when moving from the low to high materialism groups,implying that there was a marked increase in the level of psychological tension or anxiety,but there was no such effect for those low in Confucian traditional values.It was obvious that although study 3 and 2 using different measurement indexes of dependent variable,the primary findings they revealed were very congruent,both backing up the viewpoint that values conflict could lead to psychological tension or anxiety.The only difference was that study 2 found the main effects of materialism and Confucian traditional values but study 3 didn’t,which needed to be further explored in future researches.