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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Filial piety | 4/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:13:12.177574+00:00 | kb-cron |
Psychologists have found correlations between filial piety and lower socio-economic status, female gender, elders, minorities, and non-westernized cultures. Traditional filial piety beliefs have been connected with positive outcomes for the community and society, care for elder family members, positive family relationships, and solidarity. Filial piety has also been related to an orientation to the past, resistance to cognitive change, superstition and fatalism, dogmatism, authoritarianism, conformism, a belief in the superiority of one's culture, and a lack of active, critical, and creative learning attitudes. Ho connects the value of filial piety with authoritarian moralism and cognitive conservatism in Chinese patterns of socialization, basing this on findings among subjects in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He defines authoritarian moralism as hierarchical authority ranking in family and institutions, and pervasive use of moral precepts as criteria of measuring people. Cognitive moralism he derives from social psychologist Anthony Greenwald, and is a "disposition to preserve existing knowledge structures" and resistance to change. He concludes that filial piety appears to have a negative effect on psychological development, but at the same time, partly explains the high motivation of Chinese people to achieve academic results. In family counselling research, filial piety has been seen to help establish bonding with parents. Ho argues that filial piety brings along an obligation to raise one's children in a moral way to prevent disgrace to the family. However, filial piety has also been found to perpetuate dysfunctional family patterns such as child abuse: there may be both positive and negative psychological effects. Francis Hsu argued that pro-family attitudes informed by filial piety, when taken on the level of the family at large, can lead to nepotism and corruption, and are at tension with the good of the state as whole. In Chinese parent-child relations, the aspect of authority goes hand-in-hand with the aspect of benevolence. For example, many Chinese parents support their children's education fully and do not allow their children to work during their studies, which allows them to focus on their studies. Because of this combination of benevolence and authoritarianism in such relations, children feel obliged to respond to parents' expectations, and internalize them. Ho found, however, that in Chinese parent-child relations, fear also contributed to meeting parents' filial expectations: children may not internalize their parents' expectations, but rather perform roles as good children in a detached way, through affect-role dissociation. Studying Korean family relations, scholar Dawnhee Yim argues that internalization of parents' obligations by children may lead to guilt, as well as suppression of hostile thoughts toward parents, leading to psychological problems. Jordan found that despite filial piety being asymmetrical in nature, Chinese interviewees felt that filial piety contained an element of reciprocity: "...it is easy to see the parent whom one serves today as the self who is served tomorrow." Furthermore, the practice of filial piety provides the pious child with a sense of adulthood and moral heroism.
== History ==
=== Pre-Confucian history ===
The origins of filial piety in East Asia lie in ancestor worship, and can already be found in the pre-Confucian period. Epigraphical findings such as oracle bones contain references to filial piety. Texts such as the Classic of Changes (10th–4th century BCE) may contain early references to the parallel conception of the filial son and the loyal minister.
=== Early Confucianism ===
In the Tang dynasty (6th–10th century), not performing filial piety was declared illegal, and even earlier, during the Han dynasty (2nd century BCE–3rd century CE), this was punished by beheading. Behavior regarded as unfilial such as mistreating or abandoning one's parents or grandparents, or refusing to complete the mourning period for them, was punished by exile and beating, or worse. From the Han dynasty onward, the practice of mourning rites came to be seen as the cornerstone of filial piety and was strictly practiced and enforced. This was a period of unrest, and the state promoted the practice of long-term mourning to reestablish its authority. Filial piety toward one's parents was expected to lead to loyalty to the ruler, expressed in the Han proverb "The Emperor rules all-under-heaven with filial piety". Government officials were expected to take leave for a mourning period of two years after their parents died. Local officials were expected to encourage filial piety to one's parents—and by extension, to the state—by behaving as an example of such piety. The king himself would express filial piety in an exemplary way, through the ritual of "serving the elderly" (yang lao zhi li). Nearly all Han emperors had the word xiào in their temple name. The promotion of filial piety in this manner, as part of the idea of li, was a less confrontational way to create order in society than resorting to law. Filial piety was a keystone of Han morality. During the early Confucian period, the principles of filial piety were brought back by Japanese and Korean students to their respective homelands, where they became central to the education system. In Japan, rulers gave awards to people deemed to practice exemplary filial conduct. During the Mongolian rule in the Yuan dynasty (13th–14th century), the practice of filial piety was perceived to deteriorate. In the Ming dynasty (14th–17th century), emperors and literati attempted to revive the customs of filial piety. Though in that process, filial piety was reinterpreted, as rules and rituals were modified. Even on the grassroots level a revival was seen, as vigilante societies started to promote Confucian values. Members of this vigilance movement composed the book The Twenty-four Cases of Filial Piety.
=== Introduction of Buddhism ===