The Relation Orientation And The Effect Of Relation Orientation On Self-Enhancement Of Undergraduates

The relationship is an important concept in Chinese life, and "relation orientation" is a definition of special psychological attendance and behavioral style which people define their own and other's social role according to the relationship. Relation orientation is a kind of psychological attitude of individual and also a kind of behavior pattern. But there wasn't any empirical research about the construction of the Chinese people's relation orientation until recently. And as a part of Chinese culture, relation orientation must have some effect on the self-concepts, self-enhancement is one of the concepts. A great deal of western research about self-enhancement was used western people as the subjects, and we can't generalize the characteristic of Chinese people's self-enhancement from these researches. So on the basis of exploring the construction of Chinese people's relation orientation, we selected self-enhancement as one point of self-concepts, exploring the effects of relation orientation on self-enhancement.This study takes the following three steps: Firstly, by three tests (N=242, N=300, N=689+405=1094), we developed a Chinese Relation Orientation Scale, which had been proved to be reliable and valid by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Secondly, based on the open questionnaire, we got 20 target words for the Group Circulative Rating. 10 of the words were about relationship, the others were about ability. Thirdly, the formal questionnaire with 38 items, including the Chinese Relation Orientation Scale and the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale. Meanwhile, we used the 20 target words for Group Circulative Rating. And the sample of the experiment consisted of 179 undergraduate students from Wuhan.The study reveals that:(l) the construction of Chinese' relation orientation contains three dimensions, namely, relationship cognition (contains two sub-dimensions: relationship centrality & relationship predestined);relationship emotion (contains two sub-dimensions: influence on mood & relationship sensibility);relationship behaviors (contains two sub-dimensions: relationship resource & relationship availability);(2) the level of relation orientation has significant main effect on Relation Self-enhancement and Ability Self-enhancement;(3) gender only has significant main effect on AbilitySelf-enhancement, but not on Relation Self-enhancement;(4) the level of self-esteem only has significant main effect on Ability Self-enhancement;(5) there are significant interactive effects for the level of relation orientation and self-esteem on Relation Self-enhancement, not on the Ability Self-enhancement;(6) the undergraduates are self-enhance on Relation Self-enhancement, and self-effacement on Ability self-enhancement.