Filial piety is a central concept in Confucianism, containing important ideas about how children should treat their parents. Research over the past two decades has resulted in conflicting findings over whether filial piety is beneficial or harmful to individual development. The Dual Filial Piety model integrates these conflicting findings and suggests neither assessment of filial piety is appropriate. The present study offers empirical evidence in support of the dual model and offers commentary on the role of filial piety in modern Chinese society and directions for future research.

In the field of psychology, filial piety is usually defined in terms of traditional Chinese culture-specific family traditions. The problem with this approach is that it tends to emphasize identification of behavioral rules or norms, which limits its potential for application in other cultural contexts. Due to the global trend of population aging, governments are searching for solutions to the accompanying financial burden so greater attention is being focused on the issue of elder care and its relevance to filial practices. We contend that the psychological investigation of filial piety in Chinese societies has progressed to the point that it can now provide a solid structure for research targeting intergenerational relations in other cultures. We describe an indigenous psychology approach that integrated Chinese historical, philosophical, and social trends to construct a model of filial piety in terms of the dual reciprocal and authoritarian filial aspects underlying parent–child relations: the dual filial piety model (DFPM). We use this model to re-conceptualize filial piety from its usual definition as a set of Chinese culture-specific norms to a contextualized personality construct represented by a pair of culturally-sensitive psychological schemas of parent–child interaction. We then describe how the DFPM can provide a framework for research on filial relations on individual, structural, societal, and cross-cultural levels. We conclude with a discussion of how the model may be able to integrate and extend Western research on intergenerational relations and contribute to the issue of elder care beyond Chinese societies.

This study investigates the functions and implications of contemporary filial piety in three Chinese societies, namely, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China, using large-scale cross-national datasets from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey. Despite the shared Confucian cultural values among these three societies, they have sharply differed in their paths toward modernization and in the development of their sociopolitical structures over the last century. The authors propose that the implications and influences of filial piety tend to be more similar in Taiwan and Hong Kong, but may be different in China because of profound differences in its sociopolitical system. Using the dual filial piety model as the baseline for comparative analyses, the results show that dual filial piety can be found in all three societies, although there are some componential alterations in China. The study also goes beyond the common practice of treating filial piety within the confines of caring for family elders by considering its functional utility to influence an individual’s sociopsychological outcomes. The regression results support the significance of dual filial piety and its close association with various aspects of daily life in contemporary Chinese societies.

T his study examines the relation between filial belief and the frequency, origins, and solutions to parentchild conflict using an indigenous Chinese perspective. The Dual Filial Piety model is employed to categorize the four types of filial belief: nonfilial, authoritarian, reciprocal, and absolute. Questionnaires were completed by 773 junior and senior high school students from around Taiwan for the study. Results provided support for the indigenous Chinese notion that a child's filial beliefs relate to the level of parent-child conflict. The results go beyond this common conception to highlight that filial beliefs may have a particular role in decreasing self-centred but not inappropriate conflict between parents and children, and that reciprocal filial beliefs may have a more important role in decreasing conflict than authoritarian filial beliefs. Clear differences were identified in the reported origins of conflict (Demands Conflict with Desire, Unreasonable Behaviour, Demand Exceeds Ability, Role Conflict, Interparental Dispute, Immoral Demands) and solutions to conflict (self-sacrifice, compromise, reframing, ego-centred, escape) among the four filial types. Parent demands conflicting with the child's desire was the greatest source of conflict for each of the four filial types. Nonfilial types reported significantly more conflict than absolute types for four of the six origins of conflict examined. Low incidence of conflict may explain why the filial types did not differ for the remaining two origins. Overall, the four filial types reported self-sacrifice as their least used solution to parent-child conflict, and nonfilials reported significantly less use of this solution than the other three filial types. Absolutes and reciprocals reported significantly more use of reframing than the other two filial types. Results of this study provide the first empirical support for the Dual Filial Piety model and constitute a foundation for continued indigenous research on parent-child relations in Chinese culture. It is expected that an indigenous theory of parent-child relations incorporating the Dual Filial Piety model can eventually be integrated into a global psychology. C ette étude examine la relation entre la croyance filiale et la fréquence, les origines et les solutions relatives aux conflits parent-enfant, par l'entremise d'une perspective indigène chinoise. Le modèle de Piété filiale double est employé pour catégoriser les quatre types de croyances filiales: non filiales, autoritaires, réciproques et absolues. Un échantillon de 773 étudiants du secondaire provenant des environs de Taïwan a complété divers questionnaires. Les résultats soutiennent la notion chinoise indigène selon laquelle les croyances filiales de l'enfant sont reliées au niveau de conflit parent-enfant. Les résultats surpassent cette conception commune en soulevant que les croyances filiales peuvent avoir un rô le particulier dans la diminution des conflits parentenfant centrés sur la personne mais non inadéquats. En outre, il apparaît qu...

Adolescent individuating and relating autonomies were compared to the concepts of detachment and public conformity. Participants included 573 junior high and 673 senior high school students. Each type of autonomy had a distinctive function in intrapsychic or interpersonal domains and clearly differed from detachment and public conformity. In the competing model analysis, individuating autonomy was more associated than relating autonomy with adjustment variables in the personal domain, such as the global and personal aspects of selfesteem, the personal aspect of happiness, and internalizing problems (mainly anxiety and depression). Relating autonomy was more associated than individuating autonomy with adjustment variables in the interpersonal domain such as social skills and externalizing problems (mainly aggression and delinquent behaviour).