Abstract
The concept of social mentality refers to a macroscopic social mood, including emotional tones as well as social consensuses and social values, diffused through the whole society or through social groups. It is homogeneous but not equal to the simple sum of individual mentalities in society (Yang 2006). In this sense, the study of social mentality is neither about the individual psychological mechanism nor is it about pure macroscopic social facts, but rather about exploring the process of the mutual construction of individual mentality and society. In previous mainstream studies, social psychology was understood as a “behavioral science”. These studies focus more on how individual behaviors are influenced by the environment, seldom considering possible co-variations of the environment and the individual and ignoring the “social science” property of social psychology (Moscovici 2011). Such a perspective emphasizing the individual is not suitable for the study of social psychology. Actually this individualized perspective has been questioned by social psychologists and continuously revised in respective fields.
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Wu, Y., Yang, Y. (2019). The “Mutual Construction” of Society and Individual in the Formation Process of Social Mentality. In: Yang, Y. (eds) Social Mentality in Contemporary China. Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7812-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7812-6_2
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