12. Chinese Social Psychology

PSYG2504 Social Psychology

12.1 Lian Vs. Mianzi

Hu (1944) proposed that there are 2 basic categories of face in Chinese culture: Lian (臉) and mianzi (面子).

12.1.1 Lian

An individual’s lian can be preserved by faithful compliance with ritual or social norms.

Having lian “represents the confidence of society in the integrity of ego’s moral character, the loss of which makes it impossible for him to function properly in the community”.
Both a social sanction for enforcing moral standards and an internalized sanction.

• Bu yao lian (‘doesn’t want face’; 不要臉) means that he or she is nasty, shameless, and immoral: A great insult to his or her moral character.
• Diulian (shame; 丟臉) is a result of wrong-doing regardless of the presence of an audience.

12.1.2 Mianzi

Mianzi stands for the kind of prestige that is emphasized in a particular place Similar to the western face concept.

Mianzi stands for the kind of prestige that is emphasized in a particular place Similar to the western face concept: Chinese – with hierarchical structure of society with its permanency of statues.

• A reputation achieved through success, e.g. career or interpersonal relationship.
• Lian has no relationship with successFace behavior

12.2 Enhancing one’s own face

Knowing what kind of qualities are most appreciated by others in one’s social network, a person may deliberately do face-work to enhance one’s social or positional status by showing off these most appreciated qualities.

12.3 Enhancing others’ face

A person may adopt some tactics of ingratiation to enhance the resource allocators’s face so that the latter might reciprocate by allocating the resources in a way to benefits the ingratiator.

Tactics include presenting compliments of sufficient credibility, conforming with his/her opinions and behavior, giving gifts or doing other pleasant and rewarding things for others

12.4 Losing one’s own face

The losing of face may bring serious consequences for an individual, especially when he/she loses the so-called ‘moral face’.

‘Not-wanting face’ (pu-yao lien) or ‘having no face’ (mei-yu lien) implying the actor has lost all claims to being a person.

Losing face for someone or some group with whom he/she is closely connected

12.5 Hurting others’ face

When a man wants to ask for a favor from a resource allocator of some prestige, he first assesses his position relative to the allocator and the likelihood that he may be successful.

If the request is accepted, then the allocator ‘gave him mianzi’ and his face is increased.

If the request is rejected, the allocator does not give him ‘mianzi’, which then reflects badly on his own mianzi and blame the allocator, especially when the allocator occupies a lower social status.

12.6 Saving one’s own face

Losing face may cause embarrassment, shame or shyness

Possible reactions:

• Compensatory actions: terminating the face-losing behavior, reinterpreting the situation, apologizing, working hard to enhance the social status
• Retaliatory actions: express dissatisfaction in a subtle and indirect way
• Self-defensive reactions: devalue the opponent, deemphasize the seriousness of the face-losing event and pretend nothing happened

12.7 Saving others’ face

Bond and Lee (1978) studied the face-saving behavior of 100 CUHK students.

Participants were told the study was about public speaking. 1 participant in a group of 5 students was chosen to give a 3-minute talk.

Four experimental conditions:

1. Speaker uninformed condition: comments and ratings would be seen only by the experimenter
2. Informed anonymous condition: speakers would read the evaluations later alone
3. Informed face-to-face condition: they would read their comments and their ratings to the speaker privately
4. Informed-audience condition: they would read their comments and ratings to the speaker in the presence of the next group of 5 students

ANOVA revealed significant difference across all experimental conditions Subsequent test revealed more negative ratings in condition 1 (speaker uninformed condition) than in condition 4 (informed audience condition).