The effects of social change on the stability and malleability of the self-concept-from the viewpoint of cross-cultural comparison between eastern Europe and Japan

本研究旨在探讨社会变迁对自我概念稳定性和可塑性的影响。为此目的，我们把重点放在东欧国家，主要是波兰，那里确实发生了从社会主义经济到资本主义等剧烈的社会变革。我们的研究是这样进行的：(1)我们建立了衡量社会变化影响的心理指标。(2) 2004年研究了自我概念灵活性与应对社会变化压力的关系。结果表明，自我概念的灵活性越高，心理健康和自尊等适应性指标得分越高。此外，在波兰和日本的样本中都观察到这些关系。(3) 2005年，为了对2004年的研究结果进行标准化，我们研究了社会智力对上述关系的冥想作用。研究结果表明，高社会智力有助于自我概念灵活性对社会变化的适应功能。考虑到我们得到的结果，我们可以说，自我概念具有较高灵活性的人，也就是说，那些同时具有自我概念稳定性和延展性的人更有可能适应社会变革所产生的新环境。

This study aims at investigating the effects of the social changes on both the stability and the malleability of the self-concepts. For this purpose, we focused on Eastern European countries, mainly Poland where such drastic social changes as from the socialistic economies to capitalism did take place. Our research went on as follows :(1) We established the psychological measure for the effects of social change. (2) In 2004, the relationship between the flexibility of the self-concept and the coping towards the stress derived from the social changes was examined. As a result, it turned out that the higher flexibility of the self-concept was significantly related to the higher scores of the adaptive indices' such as mental health and self-esteem. Furthermore, these relationships were observed both in the Polish and the Japanese samples. (3) In 2005, for the purpose of the standardization of the findings in 2004, we investigated the meditative function of the social intelligence on the relationship above mentioned. Our hypothesis was demonstrated that the high social intelligence facilitated the adaptive function of the flexibility of the self-concept toward the social changes.Taking the results we've got into account, it might be said that the people with higher flexibility of the self-concept, i.e., those who have both the stability and malleability of the self-concept might be more likely to adapt themselves to the new environments generated by the social change.