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延展性的影响。为此，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的剧烈社会变革。本研究的主要内容如下：(1)建立了社会变迁影响的心理测量量表。(2)2004年，本研究考察了自我概念的灵活性与应对社会变革压力的关系。结果表明，自我概念的灵活性越高，心理健康、自尊等适应性指数得分越高。此外，在波兰和日本的样本中都观察到了这些关系。(3)2005年，为了标准化2004年的研究结果，我们考察了社会智力对上述关系的冥想作用。我们的假设表明，高社会智力促进了自我概念的灵活性对社会变化的适应功能。考虑到我们的结果，可以说，自我概念灵活性较高的人，即那些具有自我概念的稳定性和延展性的人，可能更有可能适应社会变化产生的新环境。

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.