中国存在着集体主义的地区差异,但学者对其内在动力机制尚未达成共识。我们认为儒家文化影响力的大小不容忽视,受儒家文化影响越深的区域集体主义倾向越强。研究运用"亲亲性(loyalty/nepotism)"的内隐文化任务对来自27个省份的745名被试进行调查,结果发现南方人对朋友更优待,内外群体的心理界限更明显,集体主义倾向更强。并探讨以儒家文化为代表的中原文化中心南迁对这一差异形成的影响及其未来研究方向。

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.