A Study Of Sense Of Power In Chinese Middle School Students

Power was an ancient human phenomenon; research on power has existed for a long time ago. Power was regarded as a structural variable in the field of politics, economics, sociology and other disciplines, and it was defined as the capacity to influencing or controlling others by providing or withholding valuable resources. Scholars thought power was based on certain social facts. Psychologists put power as a psychological variable, it was not only related to the specific social roles, but also a psychological state. The perception of one’s capacity to influence others had more effect on their behavior than the real power they have. Based on this, psychologists proposed the conception “the sense of power”, and it included “control or influence others” and “control oneself`s outcomes”, but did not distinguish between power and sense of power. Later, researchers proposed that cultural differences has a significant impact on sense of power, under the background of Oriental culture it had more emphasis on “responsibility”. About the power`s theory, the most commonly used were the Approach/Inhibition Theory of Power, the Situated Focus Theory of Power, the Social Distance Theory of Power. The influential factors of power were social economic status, personality, embodied cognition and so on. The effects of sense of power had positive, negative and neutral. To sum up, the sense of power in Chinese culture should include three parts: control or influence of others, control oneself`s outcomes, and responsibility.About the methods of power research mainly included Priming Paradigm and measurement method, and the main tools of measurement method were the Generalized Personal Sense of Power Scale, Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, the Dominance and Submissiveness Scales, the Sense of Power Scale. All these tools were used to measuring the power of adults`, and the most contents weren`t the sense of power itself, but the related psychological traits of the sense of power.The interpersonal conflict was particularly obvious in middle school students because of the changes in individuals` body and mental. It was very important to study middle school students` sense of power for them to handle interpersonal conflicts correctly and to promote the development of mental health. Thus, this study intended to investigate whether there is the sense of power in the Chinese middle school students, to develop middle school students` sense of power scale, and to analyze its characteristics, and in order to provide help for the middle school students.This study based on the literature review and 220 open-ended questionnaires, and reference of the existing scales, compiled the preliminary questionnaires of 3 dimensions and 36 items. In order to analysis its` popular test, this research selected 114 middle school students in Shandong province. The preliminary scale was distributed in Shandong and Chongqing; we got the final scale with 3 dimensions and 16 items after the item analysis and exploratory factor analysis with 371 valid questionnaires. Then this research investigated 841 and 631 students in Shandong and Chongqing province for the reliability and validity tests. The reliability tests included generalized coefficient, internal consistency and retest reliability; the validity tests included content validity, structure validity and criterion validity. In the final test, there were come to be the descriptive analysis, the gender, only-child and grade differences of the sense of power in middle school, the relationship between the sense of power, self-supporting personality and self-confidence.The results of this research were as follows:(1) The middle school students’ sense of power was consisted of 3 dimensions: the sense of control, the sense of independent, the sense of responsibility.(2) The middle school students’ sense of power scale with good reliability and validity, self-modesty scale could be used for middle school students.(3) The middle school students` sense of power closed to normal; girls` sense of power and sense of responsibility were higher than boys significantly; the only-child`s sense of control was higher than non-only-child, but the sense of responsibility was lower than non-only-child; with the increase of grade, middle school stuents` sense of power was increasing, the sense of responsibility dimension was decreasing.(4) The sense of power had a partly mediating effect between self-confidence and self-supporting personality. In the aim of promoting the development of mental health, it could be made to guide the sense of power to improve self-confidence.