The role of culture and subculture in world views: The impact of western influence and profession in Taiwan

The present study attempts to examine the impact of westernization and profession on Chinese world views. Cross-cultural studies have shown that there are differences between the east (e.g., Taiwan, China, Japan, and India) and the west (e.g., US) countries in their world hypotheses (Lo, et al., 1994) and national differences in five value orientations (Ibrahim, et. al., 1993). The question explored in this thesis is whether the Chinese in Taiwan, a country that has encountered rapid westernization, still view the world in the same way, particularly if they are in professions that require much contact with the west.; World view refers to the basic ways that people explain the world. Pepper (1942) developed the World Hypothesis Theory, including four world hypotheses: Formism, Mechanism, Organicism, and Contextualism. Kluckhohn (1951, 1956) developed his paradigm of Value Orientation and proposed five general universal problems (i.e., Human Nature, the relationship between Man and Environment, Time, Activity, and Relational Orientations) human beings face. These two pioneering works were considered.; Two major hypotheses were developed in terms of the impact of profession and western influence on Chinese world views. It was hypothesized that there were: (1) differences in world views between professionals; and (2) differences among those who are trained in professions highly related to traditional Chinese cultures (e.g., Buddhism, Confucianism), to those involved in western institutions (e.g., Science and Technology), and in both traditional and western institutions (i.e., Christian).; To assess these hypotheses, ninety-eight professionals from five groups (Buddhist Monks, Christian Priests, Scientists and Engineers, Industrialists and Businessmen, and Chinese Historians and Scholars) in Taiwan were included in this study. They are also pooled as three groups in terms of different western exposures as mentioned above. The qualitative assessment of world view involved a interview with questions which were semi-structured by Kluckhohn's (1951) concept. Two quantitative measures of world views, corresponding to above two theories: the World Hypothesis Scale (WHS) by Harris, et. al. (1977) based on Pepper and the Scale to Assess World Views (SAWV) by Ibrahim and Kahn (1984, 1987) based on Kluckhohn, were used. All subjects were required to complete both instruments.; Differences in world views were tested using MANOVAs to compare the three pooled groups, or separately among the five professional groups. The results showed that most professionals had either contextualism or organicism as their dominant world hypothesis, and there were no differences among pooled groups or professional groups in the WHS. Responding to the SAWV, most Chinese professionals believed that human nature is a combination of good and evil, they preferred collateral social relationship, believe that man must live harmoniously with their natural environment, they focused on the future and the present closely second, and finally they were oriented to doing activities. They had an optimistic world view. However, the impact of western influence and profession in world views were only shown in the participants' views on human nature and their orientations to social relations. The results were generally consistent between the quantitative and qualitative measures. The changes of presumed Chinese world views in studies of different historical periods are discussed.