LOCAL CULTURE’S RESPONSES TO GLOBALIZATION Exemplary Persons and Their Attendant Values

Taking a social identity perspective, the authors predict that when responding to the dominating influence of the global culture brought in by the Western economic powers, Hong Kong Chinese will recognize the global culture’s superiority in status attributes (e.g., competence, achievement), while at the same time maintaining positive evaluations of Chinese culture on solidarity attributes (traditional moral values). The authors test this hypothesis by examining the Chinese and Western exemplary persons listed spontaneously by Hong Kong Chinese undergraduates and the kind of values carried by these exemplary persons. In three studies, participants associate traditional Chinese exemplary persons with both solidarity and status values and traditional Western exemplary persons with status values only. Additionally, participants also associate contemporary Western exemplary persons with Western rights-based moral values, suggesting that contemporary Western exemplary persons could be important drivers of changes in the moral values in Hong Kong.