Exploration Of Psychological Difference Between Unmarried Elderly People And Married People In Shanghai From Mentalization

"Unmarried elderly women and men" has always been the focus of public since from 60s and 70s of the last century to nowadays, during when many domestic scholars had done the research on unmarried phenomenon from social and psychological point of view. However, because of cultural differences, it is seldom mentioned that unmarried elderly person is a problem, which results in less research attention. At present, besides social factors, the study aims to further explore the psychological factors behind the behavioral phenomenon of the unmarried elderly group.Considering the multi-faceted and complex feature of psychological impact and the relationship mentioned in research is a kind of social interaction, the study chooses one psychological aspect-----mentalization, and tries to explore psychological characteristics of unmarried elderly group. As one research achievement from attachment theory, mentalization describes how human beings understand his own and others' mental states (beliefs, motives, emotions, desires and needs, etc.) and behavior in personal interaction.Considering the background differences between the cities and one married group as comparison, the study selected unmarried and married people aged 30 to 40 years from Shanghai. One work is to analyse and evaluate mentalization through psychological interview and coding and data statistics. The other work is to do qualitative analysis of the interview and to explore the possible relationship between mentalization and marriage, the main conclusions are as follows:1. In the mentalization and its three sub-dimensions, the unmarried elderly group is significantly lower than the married one, which are thought and feeling about others, self-representation, general values and attitudes, while in one's own mental function aspect, two groups show no significant difference;2. In each lower-level aspect of the sub-dimensions, two groups show kinds of difference. In such aspects as meditation of others, open to findings, forgiveness and acceptance, predictability interest in different minds, sensitive to the emotional impact, senior listening ability, temporal relativity, modesty, the unmarried elderly group was significantly lower than the married one, while in suspect of reality, self-exploration tendency, unmarried elderly group was significantly higher than the married one, and in the non-transparency of mind, no hostile delusion, different looking perspective, real interest in thoughts and feeling of others, variability, developmental perspective, recognition of the preconsciousness, consciousness of contradictory, autobiographical memory, rich inner life, the two groups show no significant difference;3. Through individual interviews of married person, it is found that married mate and family interaction can improve mentalization and certain dimensional abilities, such as:meditating others with relaxed state, no self-forced to understand with anxiety.