Filial piety, authoritarian moralism, and cognitive conservatism in Chinese societies

In the present study, I examined the role of Confucian filial piety in relation to parental attitudes, the function of personality, and social cognition, using data assembled from 11 samples of adults and students in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Results showed that (a) filial attitudes tend to be moderately associated with parental attitudes and child training that emphasize obedience and indebtedness to one's parents, impulse control, and proper conduct; (b) people endorsing traditional filial and/or child-training attitudes tend to be poorer in verbal fluency, to adopt a passive, uncritical, and uncreative orientation toward learning, to hold fatalistic, superstitious, and stereotypic beliefs, and to be authoritarian, dogmatic, and conformist; and (c) parents' attitudes rooted in filial piety tend to result in high rigidity and low cognitive complexity in their children. The results support the contention that filial piety underlies both authoritarian moralism and cognitive conservatism.