Change On Different Components Of Others In The Self-Concept Across Time

Based on the character of Easterners’interdependent self, there are many significant components of others including in the Chinese self-concept, such as mother, father and friend, etc. All above are the main focus in the past studies. However, the self-concept is dynamic, and the components of others in Chinese self-concept is changing in time perspective. Ages, social environment and individual experiences are likely to be the possible reasons behind it. Past studies for some certain age groups also have been discussed before, while these concerns are about the character of one certain group, not the differences among different groups, let alone the law of the development. So the question of this study was to explore how the components of others change across time in Chinese self-concept, as well as the connection between this and the importance and intimate relationships. Specifically, study 1 aimed to explore the character of self-concept among students in junior school, senior high school, college and the middle-aged group. Study 2 aimed to explore the time trends in important and intimate relationships through means of the questionnaire. Study 3 aimed to explore the mediation effect of important and intimate between self and others, whether they mediate the components of others in the self-concept.In study 1, the first variation was reference conditions (Self, Mother, Friend, Lu Xun), the second variation was the way of judgment (R, K), so as to investigate the character of four age groups. The results was:(1) There was no difference between self and the best friend in scores of the total recognition accuracy, which was to say the best friend was close to the self-concept; (2) For senior high school students, there was no difference among the self, mother and the best friend no matter in scores of total recognition accuracy, but also in R scores, which was to say both mother component and the best friend component were in the self-concept; For college students, there was no difference between self and mother in R scores, which was to say the mother component was included in their self-concept; For the middle-aged group, there was no difference between self and mother no matter in scores of total recognition accuracy, but also in R scores, while there was also no difference between the best friend and mother, which showed that the mother component was in the self-concept, but the best friend component was also close to the self-concept.Study 2 was based on one-way ANOVA, the independent variable was age groups (junior school students, senior high school students, college students, middle-aged group), which used important scale and intimate scale to measure the relationship between self and others to explore the change tendency across time. The results of study 2 revealed the importance scores of the mother in these four age groups were higher than that of the best friend, and the gap was basically remained the same, which was to say mother was very important in all these age groups. While in the evaluations of intimate, the score of the best friend was higher than that of mother for junior school students and senior high school students. However, this gap disappeared for the college students, and reversed for the middle-aged group.In study 3, the independent variable was reference conditions (Self, Mother, Friend, classmate), which combined the self-reference paradigm with the questionnaire research, so as to investigate whether the important and intimate relationships between self and others mediated the components in the self-concept by the analysis of mediation effect and regression. The results confirmed this and found that the mediation effect of intimate was larger.The conclusion of this study was:(1) Chinese was interdependent self, and the components of others were included in the self-concept of different age groups; (2) The important and intimate relationships between self and others changed with age; (3) The intimate relationships between self and others mediated the components of the self-concept.