Kuo-Shu Yang
Taiwanese psychologist and leader of indigenous Chinese psychology
Psychologist at National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica who argued that psychology should be built from Chinese contexts. He led the indigenous psychology movement in Chinese societies and founded a research team and a journal for it.
Why this person matters
Yang argued that psychology developed in the West is itself an indigenous psychology and may not fit other societies. He built a research team and a journal for Chinese psychology, which gave cross-cultural psychology a programme of studying local ideas on their own terms. Colleagues such as Michael Harris Bond helped carry the work into English.
Main contributions
Indigenous psychology in Chinese societies
From the 1970s he sought to make psychology relevant to its Chinese context. In the 1980s he founded a research team in indigenous psychology and established the journal Indigenous Psychological Research in Chinese Societies.
Theories of Chinese personality
According to Academia Sinica, his theories of Chinese personality and its stages of development became core paradigms in the field. Michael Harris Bond, who met him in 1978, helped introduce his ideas on Chinese personality to English-speaking readers.
Books and papers
He wrote or edited more than 20 books, including Zhongguoren de xingge (Chinese Characteristics), Zhongguoren de xinli yu xingwei (Chinese Psychology and Behavior) and Huaren xinli de bentuhua yanjiu (Exploring Chinese Psychology through Indigenous Research).
Context and limits
Yang's claim that Western psychology is also indigenous is a position within a wider debate on cultural and cross-cultural psychology. The sources used here do not record criticisms of his own theories. Sources give his birthplace as Qingdao or Jiao County in Shandong, and differ by a year on his age at death, so only the birth year is given.
In your introductory course
Culture and diversity.Appears in culture chapters on indigenous psychology and the limits of Western samples. Students meet him as an example of building theory from local concepts.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 1.3. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1959
Joined the faculty of National Taiwan University.
- 1969
Took a PhD at the University of Illinois, becoming the first person in Taiwan with a PhD in psychology.
- 1971
Joined the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica as an associate research fellow.
- 1998
Elected an academician of Academia Sinica.
Sources
- Academia Sinica Newsletter, in memoriam Kuo-Shu YangSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- PolyU Scholars Hub, My Academic Journey with Kuo-Shu Yang: Traveling More Widely and More Deeply into Chinese CultureUniversity. Abstract inspected.
- Wikipedia, Kuo-Shu YangReference work. Reference article inspected.