Research On The Development Of Ingroup Awareness In The Context Of Cultural Globalization

In the theory of four dimensions of culture, Geert Hofstede points out that collectivism has a distinctive feature of a compact social structure. Within such a structure, people differentiate ingroups and outgroups; they expect their ingroups (relatives, clan, organization) to take care of them and in exchange for that, they show absolute loyalty to the ingroup; it is at this level, specific cultural differences appear. The famous psycho-cultural expert Trandis also contends that in collective cultures, the distinction between ingroup and outgroup is particularly noticeable. Since Chinese collective culture is greatly influenced by the ancient Confucianism, people are especially group-oriented and have a strong ingroup awareness.As the distinction between ingroup and outgroup is a psychological factor that can greatly influence intercultural communications, most studies on ingroup and outgroup are often confined to a psychological perspective and explore by means of doing experiments. However, less attention is paid to its dynamic development under the context of cultural globalization. Given the needed research in this aspect and based on the theories of Hofstede and Gudykunst, this thesis, from a domestic perspective, explores the development of ingroup awareness in the context of cultural globalization so as to make the reader thoroughly understand Chinese culture, to reflect the trend of cultural development in the cultural globalization process, and to discuss the paradox that may exist in the theories of intercultural communication.This research, by means of questionnaire, surveyed the ingroup awareness of two separate samples, one being the intercultural group who have frequent contacts with western cultures and the other the non-intercultural group. Having collected data obtained from each group, differences between them is transversely analyzed. Finally, the author discusses the development of ingroup awareness in the cultural globalization process by applying the theory of structure of culture, contact theory and figure-ground theory.Based on Allport's contact theory, a lot of people believe that with increasing intercultural communications, people from different cultures can learn from each other and gradually reduce their cultural differences including differences of ingroup and outgroup cultures. However, a surprising result is found in this research that increasing intercultural communication hasn't weakened the ingroup awareness in certain aspects surveyed, for instance, the ingroup awareness in aspects of family, organization, team and gender still remains strong; in the aspect of traditional belief, the ingroup awareness even has become stronger. This fact in turn best proves the existence of a paradox about ingroup awareness and contact theory in intercultural communication, which is an important finding of this research.Although there is still a profound space for the research on ingroup awareness, the present thesis would shed some light on the future intercultural studies both in theory and practice.