A Study On The Psychological Distance Of Different Forms Of Chinese And English

Psychological distance is a subjective experience about the distance between something and the self, here and now which can be close or far away. It is egocentric and auto-processing. Current literatures on psychological distance include construal level theory, fluncy and emotion intensity. The form of representation has influence on it, too. Psychological distance consists of four dimensions:temporal distance, spatial distance, social distance and hypotheticality. Different from the other three dimensions which have explicit definition, social distance has a variety of definitions and is manifested in many forms, including interpersonal relationship, distinction between ingroup and outgroup, social power, politeness, culture and so on. Language is the most important tool for thinking and communication in the society of human being. It’s a symbol system to record the culture it belongs to. The connection between language and culture is close and tight. On the one hand, language is the carrier of culture and reflects it; on the other hand, it’s a significant part of culture and will be influenced by culture. In this study, we chose culture as the representation of the social distance, and selected Chinese and English, which are two languages that college students are frequently in touch with, as the representation of language. Undergraduates in Southwest University, whose first language is Chinese and second language is English, participated in the research. We designed four experiments to investigate the relation between different forms of Chinese and English and social distance, and the different psychological distance the two languages giving rise to people (the first experiment was about simplified Chinese and lowercase English, the second one was about traditional Chinese and lowercase English, the third one was about traditional Chinese and uppercase English, and the last one was about simplified Chinese and uppercase English). The conclusion of the study is: individual’s psychological distance of Chinese is smaller than that of English; Chinese is related with closer social distance and English is related with farther social distance.The details of the experiment results are presented as follows:(1) In the first study, the main effect of language was significant, indicating that the response time of simplified Chinese was smaller than that of lowercase English. The interaction of language and social distance was also significant. The response time was smaller for simplified Chinese to represent objects in Chinese culture than that in western culture, indicating that simplified Chinese was related to closer social distance. However, opposite result was shown with lowercase English, indicating it was related to farther social distance.(2) In the second study, the main effect of language was significant, indicating that the response time of traditional Chinese was smaller than that of lowercase English. The interaction of language and social distance was also significant. The response time was smaller for traditional Chinese to represent objects in Chinese culture than-that in western culture,indicating that traditional Chinese was related to closer social distance. However, opposite result was shown with lowercase English, indicating it was related to farther social distance.(3) In the third study, the main effect of language was significant, indicating that the response time of traditional Chinese was smaller than that of uppercase English. The interaction of language and social distance was also significant. The response time was smaller for traditional Chinese to represent objects in Chinese culture than that in western culture, indicating that traditional Chinese was related to closer social distance. However, opposite result was shown with uppercase English, indicating it was related to farther social distance.(4) In the fourth study, the main effect of language was significant, indicating that the response time of simplified Chinese was smaller than that of uppercase English. The interaction of language and social distance was also significant. The response time was smaller for simplified Chinese to represent objects in Chinese culture than that in western culture, indicating that simplified Chinese was related to closer social distance. However, opposite result was shown with uppercase English, indicating it was related to farther social distance. (5) The personal English level did not influence the results in most conditions, except for the fourth study in which it impacted the response time of uppercase English.