Abstract: Under the multicultural background, cultural conflicts may lead to the crisis of cultural related self-concept, especially in cultural identity. Cultural self-confidence refers to the positive emotions and evaluation of group culture by cultural subjects, which encourages individuals to understand, choose, and evaluate cultures in a multicultural environment to cope with psychological threats. The formation of cultural self-confidence depends a great extent on the individual’s understanding and acceptance of cultural information. However, the processing of culture information is multi-layered. The core and stable consensus of cultural elements such as beliefs and values need abstract thinking. While the external elements of culture (e.g., language and cultural norms), can be easily updated with changes in the situation concretely. The diversity of culture and the complexity of expression and processing require individuals to choose both comprehensive and specific ways of thinking when understanding cultural information. The construal level not only reflects the individual's cognitive preference and habitual processing, but also shapes the cultural self-confidence of individuals and groups from the cognitive perspective.
According to the Theory of Construal Level, with the increase of psychological distance from an object, people will describe the object with a higher level of explanation. Cultural self-confidence focuses on the attribution of cultural values and cultural significance. Individuals tend to adopt an abstract way of thinking when they understand and express cultural elements and complete the construction of cultural meaning, which is consistent with the effect of matching interpretation levels. Regardless of abstract customs, values, and beliefs, or specific cultural behaviors, languages, and systems, cultural self-confidence can be reflected through significance to individuals, groups, and society, and highlights the necessity of high-level cultural construction formed by cultural self-confidence. This study uses the Behavior Cognitive Scale and the Cultural Confidence Questionnaire to explore whether the differences in cultural confidence are related to individual construction levels (Study 1). Studies 2a and 2b explore abstract thinking (vs. concrete thinking) could enhance one’s cultural confidence. Meanwhile, it conducts a mini meta-analysis to determine whether this manipulation paradigm has a universal impact on cultural confidence in the separate way from cultural cues.
In Study 1, there is a small but significant correlation between the construal level and cultural confidence with construal level positively predicting individual cultural confidence. People with a high level of understanding will have a positive attitude and evaluation towards culture, but it is only reflected in the cognitive and behavioral levels of cultural confidence. In the Study 2a, it uses the "why-how" paradigm to manipulate the interpretation level, however, this manipulating has no significant impact on cultural confidence. In the study of 2b, using the "why-how" paradigm, participants are required to write down three reasons (high construal level) or measures for celebrating a Chinese festival (low construal level). The results indicated that the construal level and cultural confidence is not directly related, but is also indirectly related through cultural content. In other words, cultural confidence can only be enhanced by manipulating a high levels culture, and a higher level of cultural interpretation ability could stimulate higher cultural confidence. However, this enhancement is only shown in the domains of cognition and behavior. This study contributes to understanding the cognitive basis of cultural self-confidence in that it helps people to choose appropriate cultural expressions in the process of spreading and promoting cultural confidence.

Key words: cultural confidence, construal level, cultural construal level

摘要： 文化自信是完成“我—我们—文化大我”自我过程中重要的心理构念,其建构会受到表征文化事物抽象水平的影响。研究分别采用问卷法和实验法,探究文化建构水平对文化自信的影响。研究发现,建构水平对文化自信具有提升作用,该提升作用仅体现在文化自信的文化认知和行为层面。建构水平越高的个体对文化信息的评价越抽象,更注重文化信息所包含的意义和价值,其文化自信水平也更高。建构水平对文化自信的影响需要以文化内容作为桥梁才能凸显,即建构水平对文化自信的提升作用具有文化领域性。

关键词: 文化自信, 建构水平, 文化建构水平