This article explains the various aspects and characteristics of the concept of face and morality in Confucian society. The vocabularies for describing Chinese usage of face can be divided into two broad categories, namely moral face and social face. Both are related to Confucian concepts of morality. It analyzes the relevant features of Confucian morality and discusses it from three different ethical perspectives. The article uses the thus obtained conceptual framework to explain the commonality in findings from two separate empirical studies on episodes of losing face conducted in Taiwan and mainland China. In Confucian society, not only do protective face and acquisitive face constitute significant orientations of personality, but such indigenous concepts as zuo mianzi (making face) and zheng mianzi (keeping up face) may also have important psychological implications.

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Previous research on the feeling of “face” has long described “face” as a complicated phenomenon in Confucian societies. Indeed, the feeling of face is highly context dependent. One may have very different (having or losing) face perception if the same face event occurs in a different context. To better capture the features of how face is felt, effects on possible responses need to be considered. Therefore, this article adopts a perspective of psychosocial equilibrium to elaborate people’s feeling of face in Taiwan, a Confucian society. The first section illustrates the concept of psychosocial equilibrium and its psychodynamic effects on people’s feeling of face. Then, the second section of this article takes positive social situations (having face events) as backdrop to exhibit how people balance their psychosocial equilibrium with different relationships. Following the positive social situations, the third section of this article then focuses on the negative situations (losing face events) to explain how losing face is felt due to unbalance of psychosocial equilibrium with one’s relation in that specific context.

The concept of modesty formerly seemed to efface one's own success which is opposed to self‐enhancement. Taking the perspective of social script, this study proposes that Chinese modesty regarding one's success would result in others' more intensive compliments, which also has the function of enhancing oneself. Study 1 reconstructed the contents of the Chinese modesty script by asking participants to write down dialogues between achievers and admirers and found that when an achiever received an admirer's compliments, the former's dominant response was to deny his/her success modestly. On the contrary, when an admirer was confronted by an achiever's modest reaction, the dominant response for the admirer was to deny the achiever's modesty and to express compliments more intensively. Study 2 examined if people in Chinese societies would choose and judge people's proper behaviours in complimentary situations according to the modesty script. The results supported this speculation. Study 3 examined the effects of the admirer's compliments on the achiever's self‐esteem and found that the admirer's compliments following the achiever's modesty did have the function of enhancing the achiever's self‐esteem.

Responses of Taiwanese graduate students to favor requests from different social targets (peer vs. superior) were compared across two scenarios. Factors influencing the decision to accept or reject the request were also explored. When the favor request was consistent with the relational context (academic research), participants were more likely to accept the request from a professor than from a classmate. Those who accepted the professor’s request were more likely to report authority-oriented reasons. When the content of the favor request was inconsistent with the relational context, participants tended to reject the request from both a professor and a classmate. Those who rejected the professor’s request reported more self-assertive reasons for their decision. Although participants rated Rational Reciprocity as the most important factor in making their decision, interpersonal closeness seemed to be a major concern in deciding to do a favor for a peer. Social interactions for acquaintances in a Confucian society are influenced by Confucian ethics advocating the principle of respecting the superior and the principle of favoring the intimate, rather than solely by the principle of social exchange.