Engagement with beauty in Hong Kong

Pages:356-360
Reese Hui and Rhett Diessner (Department of Psychology, Lewis-Clark State College, Lewiston)

The Engagement with Beauty Scale 2.0 (EBS2), designed from the philosophical works of Kant, Hegel, and Aquinas, and the psychological work of Jonathan Haidt was translated into Cantonese and administered, by snowball method, to 106 Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. Results showed strong internal consistency for the measure, and typical of samples from around the world, women scored slightly higher than men in their engagement with beauty. Contrary to non-Asian samples, but similar to a sample from India, no developmental pattern was found (i.e., there was no significant positive correlations between age and levels of engagement with beauty). Also, contrary to most international samples, the factor structure of the EBS2 was monolithic for this Chinese sample, with most of the variance loading on one factor, rather than the emergence of the anticipated four factors (natural beauty, artistic beauty, moral beauty, and beautiful ideas). This implies that, at least for this sample of Chinese people, their view beauty is considerably different than non-Chinese, and more holistic.