Comparative Learning Advantages Of Micro-social Structure: Symmetry And Dialectics

The social environment in which human beings live is filled with a large amount of complex information about social relationships.How people effectively process this complex social relationship information has been a research topic of great interest to psychologists.It has been found that structural balance features in social relationships can be internalized as an abstract cognitive schema in people’s brain,which largely reduces the cognitive load on the brain and improves the efficiency of people’s processing of complex social relationship information.At present,researchers have found two kinds of balance schemas: one is the symmetrical balance schema proposed in Heider’s balance theory in Western culture,and the other is the dialectical balance schema proposed by the theory of yin and yang and the five elements in traditional Chinese culture.Obviously,the structural balance of the schema has certain cultural differences or preferences.However,it is not clear whether the dialectical balance schema has a learning advantage for Chinese people in learning social relations.This involves issues such as the cultural nature of social relations and learning efficiency,which have high theoretical and practical significance.In order to investigate whether Chinese people have a learning advantage in learning social relationships with dialectical balance schema,two behavioral experiments were designed using a variation of the climbing mountain paradigm,starting from the yin-yang relationship and the five-element structure in the doctrine of yin-yang and five-element.In Study 1,to investigate the learning advantage of binary social relationship structures in Chinese,45 college student subjects were randomly recruited and a two-factor within-subjects design of 2(structure type: symmetrical binary structure vs.dialectical binary structure)× 2(social relationship type: helping vs.hindering)was used to compare subjects’ response times when learning two balanced structures of binary social relationships.The results revealed that the reaction times of subjects learning the symmetric binary structure were significantly smaller than those of the dialectical binary structure,i.e.,subjects were more likely to learn the symmetric binary structure.This indicates that the learning advantage of the dialectical balance schema is not significant when learning the binary social relationship structure.In Study 2,to investigate the learning advantage of the five-dimensional social relationship structure in Chinese,64 college students were randomly recruited and a two-factor within-subjects design of 2(structure type: symmetrical five-dimensional structure vs.dialectical five-dimensional structure)× 2(social relationship type: helping vs.hindering)was used to compare subjects’ responses when learning the two five-dimensional social relationship balance structures.The results revealed that the reaction times of subjects learning the dialectical pentad structure were significantly smaller than those of the symmetric pentad structure,i.e.,subjects were more likely to learn the dialectical pentad structure.This indicates that the dialectical balanced schema has a learning advantage when learning the five-dimensional social relationship structure.In summary,Chinese people are more likely to use the symmetrical balanced schema,a common human schema,when learning the simpler binary social relationship structure,while they are more likely to use the dialectical balanced schema,the social structure that fits their own mind when learning the more complex five-dimensional social relationship structure.