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Aspects of creativity concepts across different Chinese populations were examined. A Likert style questionnaire consisting of 60 adjectives was administered to 451 undergraduates from Beijing, Guangzhou, Taipei and Hong Kong. The results show that: (a) the core characteristics of creativity identical in all the samples are: “originality”, “innovativeness”, “thinking” and “observational skills”, “flexibility”, “willingness to try”, “self confidence”, and “imagination”; (b) the Taipei sample, unlike the other three samples, does not associate “wisdom”, “assertiveness”, and “individualism” with creativity; (c) in all Chinese populations the three factors labeled innovative, dynamic, and intellectual were distinguishable in the concept of creativity; (d) “artistic” and “humorous” were missing in the Chinese perception of creativity; (e) creativity characteristics received relatively low ratings on the desirability scale.

This study examines how 90 university students and 77 old people in Beijing view filial piety in Chinese society now. The results show that old people continue to hold high filial expectations for young people and that young people still endorse strongly filial obligations for old people. Obedience received the lowest rating while respect received the highest rating.

This paper proposes that Chinese people have traditionally been ambivalent about humor in the following three manners: (1) they tend to value humor but consider themselves to lack humor; (2) being humorous is not associated with being an orthodox Chinese; (3) humor is important but not for everyone. The paper also proposes that the Chinese ambivalence toward humor is largely due to an appreciation-despising complex about humor that is deep-rooted in Chinese culture. To verify this, this author conducted a survey study among a sample of 337 undergraduates in Hong Kong and Huhehot. Results show that (1) participants all rated highly on importance of humor but low on perception of self humor; (2) male students considered themselves to be more humorous than female students; (3) the top ten important characteristics for humor are fundamentally different from the top ten characteristics important for Chinese personality; (4) perception of humor is more positive than that of the Chinese personality. The paper concludes with a discussion of the psycho-social implications of the present findings on studies and enhancement of humor in Chinese society as well on some thoughts on further directions of research.

This study examined the utility of an adapted version of the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) to measure Chinese undergraduates' ability to bounce back from stress. The BRS together with measures tapping optimism, self-esteem, pessimism, and physical health were administered to 547 Hong Kong and 268 mainland Chinese undergraduates. The BRS was found to measure one single construct and exhibited convergent validity in both samples. Further analyses using a path analytic model showed that the BRS scores substantially mediated the link between the two positive traits (optimism and self-esteem) and physical health in the two samples. The results suggested that the BRS is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring Chinese undergraduates' ability to bounce back from stress. The implications for further research related to resilience in Chinese people are discussed.