A Cross-Cultural Study In The Attitude Changes Of Chinese And U.S. Students Toward Individualism And Collectivism

With the acceleration of globalization and several years of in-depth integration of China'seconomy into the world economy, China has undergone great changes in many aspects of thesociety. The Chinese people are more exposed to various opinions, values, lifestyles etc. thanever, and gradually they have changed their perceptions and attitudes toward things. What'smore, the Chinese government attaches great importance to cross-cultural communicationamong governments, businesses, universities, and other areas. More and more foreigners, forexample, Americans, come to China to study Chinese culture and do business. They are alsoin the process of adapting and integrating themselves into the Chinese culture. So there mightbe some changes in their subjective culture, especially in the aspect of individualism andcollectivism.This thesis attempts to identify the changes or changing tendencies in the aspect ofindividualism and collectivism among Chinese students and U.S. students in China. Since theyounger generation can accept the changes more easily, and changes in their conceptions andattitudes will bring changes to their behaviors Individualism and collectivism is the core valueamong the cultural dimensions. In order to identify cultural changes and changing patterns inindividualism and collectivism, the author surveys some university students and U.S. studentsin China. After reviewing relevant studies and theories on individualism and collectivism,especially on the four constructs (Horizontal Collectivism, Vertical Collectivism, HorizontalIndividualism and Vertical Individualism) that could reflect the changing patterns of bothgroups more conspicuously, and the factors giving rise to the changes, the author comes upwith three hypotheses. And based on that, questionnaires are distributed to Chinese and U.S.university undergraduates. The results the author gets from the survey are compared to theprevious researches to identify the changes. Meanwhile, there is a comparison betweenChinese and U.S. students, the aim of which is to find out the cultural convergence betweenthe two.As is predicted, the author's hypotheses are justified to various extents. The Chinese studentsshow relatively strong collectivistic tendency, but they are moving toward individualism andthe horizontal dimension, while individualism is still a dominant dimension among the U.Sstudents, but moving from the vertical dimension toward the horizontal one. Based on thesesresults and relevant analysis, the thesis comes to conclusions. Finally, the thesis points out thelimitations in the research and proposes some recommendations for future relevant studies.