中國存在著集體主義的地區差異,但學者對其內在動力機制尚未達成共識。我們認為儒家文化影響力的大小不容忽視,受儒家文化影響越深的區域集體主義傾向越強。研究運用"親親性(loyalty/nepotism)"的內隱文化任務對來自27個省份的745名被試進行調查,結果發現南方人對朋友更優待,內外群體的心理界限更明顯,集體主義傾向更強。並探討以儒家文化為代表的中原文化中心南遷對這一差異形成的影響及其未來研究方向。

It has been found that collectivism differs across provinces within China. Nevertheless there's still no consensus on its underlying mechanism. We propose that the strength of Confucianism is the main reason behind differences in collectivism across China i.e. central Confucian places tend to be more collectivistic than other places. We tested 745 Han Chinese participants from 27 provinces and found that southerners tend to be more collectivistic compared to northerners on loyalty/nepotism task. These results stand in support of the strength of Confucianism hypothesis arguing that south China had replaced north China as the center of Confucianism since Song dynasty due to the relocation of Central-Plains culture from north China to south China.