An Epistemological Strategy for Initiating the Third Wave of Psychology Andrzej, Extended abstract

In my article, Philosophical Switch for the Нird Wave
of Psychology in the Age of Globalization I proposed
an epistemological strategy for constructing cultureinclusive
theories of psychology which had been used
to study Confucian cultural system by myself and my
colleagues in Taiwan for more than ten years . Нe
strategy consists of two steps: First, based on the
philosophy of postpositivism, I constructed a Mandala
model of self and [a Face and Favor model for social
interaction , both of them are supposed to be universal.
Second, I used them as frameworks to analyze the text
of four books on pre-Qin Confucian classics, namely,
Analects, Mencius, Нe Great Learning and
ZhongYung by the method of hermeneutics. By doing
so, we are able to understand the deep structure of pre-
Qin Confuciansim including four parts: • Confucian
concepts of Heaven and destiny • Confucian ethics for
ordinary people • Confucian ethics for scholars •
Confucian theory of self-cultivation Confucian ethics
and morality are transcendental formal structure for
sustaining people’s lifeworld’s in Chinese society,
which will be manifested in various aspects of Chinese
social life. Once the structure of Confucian ethics and
morality have been clearly identified by the scientific
methods , we are able to construct many cultureinclusive
theories with a careful consideration of the
context for social interaction. In my book, Foundation
of Chinese Psychology: Confucian Social Relations, I
demonstrated how I constructed a series of theoretical
models for conducting empirical research on social
exchange, moral judgements, face dynamics,
achievement motivation, organizational behaviors, and
conflict resolutions in Chinese society. All of these
theoretical models constitute the scientific microworld
or the scientific research programmer of Confucian
rationalism with the structure of Confucian ethics and
morality as its hard core Because any theoretical
model of social science can depict only a particular
side of social life , now I am teaching member of my
research team how to construct more culture-inclusive
theories by this epistemological strategy to dialogue
with Western models of individualism. Recently, we
have published a series of articles as a special issue of
Frontier of Psychology to address on issue related not
only to Confucianism but also some aspects of
Legalism Daoism Due to the one-sidedness of
theoretical construction in social science, I encourage
my colleagues to construct more and more cultureinclusive
models for the sake of establishing a tradition
of autonomous social science in Confucian culture.
Because my Mandala model of self and Face and
Favor model of social interaction are supposed to be
universal, my epistemological strategy with the
utilization of these two models can be applied to study
any non-Western culture. In opposition to the pancultural
dimensional approach prevailing in
contemporary cultural psychology or cross-cultural
psychology, which pretend to capture the cultural
di ؤ erences by reducing them on such dimensions as
individualism/ collectivism , or independent self/interdependent
self my strategy provides an alternative for
non-Western psychologists to construct their own
cultural system. Instead of assuming an attitude of
anti-colonizationalism, I do belief that a
comprehensive understanding on the progress of
Western philosophy of science, particularly the switch
from positivism to post-positivism, is a necessary but
not su Ù¹cient condition for non-Western psychologis

Author(s): Kwang-Kuo Hwang,

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