Aruna Wu

Previous research on the relationship between empathy and subcategories of prosocial behavior, specifically cooperation, has shown inconsistent findings. It has also paid limited attention to gender differences in the impact of empathy. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between empathy and cooperation in Chinese junior high school adolescents, and the gender differences, through three studies. In Study 1, 448 eighth‐grade adolescents (age = 12–15 years, 55.1% males) completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Cooperative Propensity Rating Scale; the results showed that adolescent empathy was positively associated with cooperative propensity, and this association was significantly higher for males than for females. Study 2 used longitudinal data from 246 eighth‐grade adolescents (age = 12–15 years, 54.5% males) to further support the positive association between empathy and cooperation propensity and the gender differences found in Study 1. Study 3 employed the public goods dilemma to examine the effects of empathic states on the cooperative behavior of 157 eighth‐grade adolescents (age = 13–16 years, 48% males) by evoking empathy. Using different research methods, this study revealed a facilitative relationship between empathy and cooperation and demonstrated that empathy was more predictive of cooperation among male than among female adolescents.

The perception of the value of children (VOC) can elucidate why individuals consider it beneficial to have children by uncovering their subjective intentions and experiences regarding their fertility decisions. Using VOC perceptions to understand fertility change in the modernization process, this qualitative study explores how parents’ VOC change meshes with China’s socioeconomic and cultural contexts. This article examines intergenerational VOC evolution under the support and constraints of socioeconomic environments and cultural norms. Grandparents, embedded in the rural economy and traditional culture, exhibit economic/utilitarian and social/normative VOC. Young parents, living, and having grown up in urban economic and modernized cultural contexts, recognize emotional/psychological VOC for fertility intention. Migrant parents living in urban economies but bound by traditional culture believe that social/normative VOC is important for fertility intention. The results advance understanding of the integration of individuals’ psychological intentions with the socioeconomic-cultural contexts that influence their fertility and VOC.

Resumo A psicologia cultural da educação se esforça para compreender a posição do indivíduo em desenvolvimento. Este artigo procura interpretar a missão e a visão da psicologia cultural da educação no contexto da sociedade moderna, tendo em perspectiva uma tendência social individualizada e tecnomecanista. O conceito de “indivíduo contextualizado” é proposto como um aporte para conceituar a dependência relacional e contextual do sujeito em desenvolvimento. O artigo também reinterpreta Li e Xu “Pesquisa em psicologia do desenvolvimento baseada na prática educacional na China” de 2018, como um exemplo para explorar de que modo é possível utilizar a estrutura do “indivíduo contextualizado” para orientar pesquisas educacionais e estudos de intervenção, possibilitando generalizações teóricas em um ambiente educacional local.

Cultural psychology of education strives to understand the locality of the developing individual. This article tries to interpret the mission and vision of the cultural psychology of education in the background of modern society, with individualizing and techno-mechanistic social trends as its prominent feature. The concept of “contextualized individual” is proposed as a potential framework to conceptualize the relational and contextual dependence of the developing subject. The article also re-interprets Li and Xu’s 2018 paper “Developmental Psychology Research Based on Educational Practice in China” to explore how to use the framework of the “contextualized individual” to theoretically channel and generalize educational researches and interventional studies in a local educational setting.

Educational intervention has been narrated for a long time as a battle between two agentive subjects, educators and students. In this article, we introduce two interrelating concepts of SHI (势 in Chinese) and SHUN SHI (顺势 in Chinese) from Chinese philosophy into psychology to provide an alternative perspective to understand students’ development and educational intervention. The concept of SHI sheds light on the propensity of open system’s becoming process toward the future underlying system’s present configuration derived from system’s historical interaction with its environment. SHUN SHI is to grasp the opportunity of SHI evolving into being prominent and to transform the system by alertly following its unfolding process. Understanding and applying SHI and SHUN SHI in the area of developmental and educational psychology is discussed and clarified based on a comparison with the dynamic system theory and zone of proximal development. An empirical research is also provided to respond to the method challenge posed by the two concepts.

In this paper we tried to deepen Zagaria, Andò and Zennaro’s reflection on the problem of integrating psychology in their paper “Psychology: A Giant with Feet of Clay” (Zagaria et al. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 54, 3, 2020). Psychology obtained this question from the uniqueness of its objects and it is an unavoidable question because of the social reality of modernity. We went back to the philosophical transitions on subject and proposed that Karl Marx’s thinking on the subjectivity of objective faculties can be the first principle for different schools and sub-disciplines, as it conceptualizes human beings as natural beings but with its consciousness of being from its social praxis. Thus, it provides a starting point of humanized psychology. Further direction and tasks for psychology is also examined under a call of psychology going back and entering into the life world.