This study investigates the functions and implications of contemporary filial piety in three Chinese societies, namely, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China, using large-scale cross-national datasets from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey. Despite the shared Confucian cultural values among these three societies, they have sharply differed in their paths toward modernization and in the development of their sociopolitical structures over the last century. The authors propose that the implications and influences of filial piety tend to be more similar in Taiwan and Hong Kong, but may be different in China because of profound differences in its sociopolitical system. Using the dual filial piety model as the baseline for comparative analyses, the results show that dual filial piety can be found in all three societies, although there are some componential alterations in China. The study also goes beyond the common practice of treating filial piety within the confines of caring for family elders by considering its functional utility to influence an individual’s sociopsychological outcomes. The regression results support the significance of dual filial piety and its close association with various aspects of daily life in contemporary Chinese societies.

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Empirical research has shown that parent-child conflict is positively related to poor adjustment in adolescents; however, the underlying processes have not been adequately examined. To explore the possible mediating pathways, reciprocal filial belief and perceived threat were chosen to represent two likely mechanisms accounting for how parent-child conflict harms adolescents' perceptions of their relationship with their parents and their self-perceptions within their cognitive-appraisal framework. The former operates by attenuating children's affection towards their parents and the latter by lowering their self-perceptions. This study also distinguishes internalizing from externalizing problems in order to examine whether lower reciprocal filial belief more strongly mediates the relation between conflict with parents and adolescents' externalizing problems and whether perceived threat more strongly mediates the relation between conflict with parents and adolescents' internalizing problems. Hypotheses are as follows: (1) the more parent-child conflict adolescents report, the less reciprocal filial belief they recognize, which, in turn, leads to more maladjustments, especially externalizing ones; (2) the more parent-child conflicts adolescents report, the more threat they perceive, which, in turn, leads to more maladjustments, especially internalizing ones. Participants consisted of 603 Taiwanese adolescents (226 males and 377 females) aged 15 to 19 (average age = 16.95; SD = 0.78). Structural equation modelling analyses confirmed the hypotheses. However, the three direct effects of conflict on internalizing problems, aggression, and deviant behaviour were still significant. In addition, a greater effect of the paternal than the maternal role on the link between conflict and attenuated reciprocal filial belief, and between perceived threat and internalizing problems, was identified. Implications for understanding the mediation processes responsible for all indirect effects, even the subsidiary ones, and the greater impact of conflict with the father than with the mother are discussed. Limitations of the study and considerations for future research are also addressed. La recherche empirique a indiqué que le conflit parent-enfant est positivement lié à une faible adaptation chez les adolescents; cependant, les processus sous-jacents n'ont pas été adéquatement examinés. Pour explorer les trajectoires de médiation possibles, la croyance filiale réciproque et la menace perçue ont été sélectionnées afin de représenter deux méchanismes plausiblement responsables de comment le conflit parent-enfant nuit aux peceptions des adolescents de leur relation avec les parents ainsi que de leurs auto-perceptions dans le cadre de leur évaluation cognitive. Le premier fonctionne en atténuant l'affection des enfants envers leurs parents et le dernier fonctionne en diminuant leurs auto-perceptions. Cette étude distingue aussi les problèmes internalisés de ceux qui sont externalisés dans le but d'examiner si la plus faible croyance de ...

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