Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 25, 2025

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language
Published on: October 13, 2018
Cognitive entailments among "the true, the good, the beautiful": a mainland Chinese sample
Xinchi Yu1,2,3, Ernst Pöppel1,4, Weidong Zhan5
1School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long debated about the entailments among "the true, the good, the beautiful" (TGB hereafter). In the current article, we directly probed mainland Chinese subjects' cognitive entailment among TGB. Using 1-7 (Experiment 1) and 1-6 (Experiment 2) Likert scales, we convergently observed that mainland Chinese subjects tend to think that the beautiful is not the true, and that the good is the beautiful. Additionally, Experiment 1 also revealed that mainland Chinese subjects tend to think that the true is not the beautiful. Some of these results may reflect anthropological universals, and some others may reflect cultural specifics. Experiment 3 revealed that the most popular translation of TGB in Chinese into English is rather "the true, the kind, the beautiful", suggesting that the three concepts mapped to TGB in Chinese is not one-to-one mapped to the three concepts mapped to TGB in English. Therefore, caution should be exercised when making cross-linguistic or cross-cultural comparisons about TGB in the future.
Related Concept Videos
The Representativeness Heuristic
Cognitive Dissonance
The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison
Language and Cognition
Intelligence
The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic

