关键词: 自我建构, 利己归因偏好, 自我增强, 中庸思维

Abstract:

Cross-cultural research pointed out the discrepancies of attribution tendencies in different cultures. Westerner tends to display Self-Serving Attributional Bias (SSAB), which is a tendency that people attributed own success to internal causes such as ability and effort, and attributed own failure to external causes such as luck and the difficulty of task. However, people of oriental countries such as Japanese are easily to show opposite Self-Effacing Attributional bias. One appropriate explanation is from the viewpoint of cultural Self-Construals. According to cultural Self-Construal theory (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), people in different cultures hold different Self-Construals. ‘Independent Self-Construal’ of Westerners addresses independence and pays attention to individual’s privacy, rights, and liberties, while ‘interdependent Self-Construal’ of Easterners such as Japanese and Chinese addresses coordination and relationship with others. Those disparate self views are reflected in eastern and western people' thoughts, cognition, and behaviors. Due to different Self-Construals, Easterners and Westerners show different attribution biases. Easterners are easily to show modesty attribution tendencies because of their interdependent Self-Construal. Their self-enhancement is through an indirect way. Westerners tend to show SSAB and direct self-enhancement due to independent Self-Construal. Cultural Self-Construals have strong impacts to attribution biases. Furthermore, according to Takata (2000), individual’s Self-Construal includes of independent aspect and interdependent aspect. It is likely that individual differences in Self-Construals influence attribution tendencies. However, it still lacks direct experimental evidences to confirm it. This study conducted an experiment to discuss the influences of individual differences of Self-Construal with SSAB and self-enhancement in Chinese college students. One hundred and four Chinese college students in Shanghai in mainland China completed a fictitious social sensation ability test. Then their Self-Construal and so on was measured. Finally they made attribution about their performance and evaluated the test. The results indicated that the Chinese college students showed significant SSAB and self-enhancement in attributions and evaluations of test. The individuals which independence is dominant (independent Self-Construal) showed a more pronounced self-enhancement than the individuals which interdependency is dominant (interdependent Self-Construal). Furthermore, either in success or in failure situation, there is a significant positive correlation between independence and self-enhancement, the stronger the independence is, the self-enhancement is more notable. Independence plays a crucial role for self-enhancement. Interdependency is positively correlative with self-enhancement also, especially in failure situation. The results of this research indicated that individual differences of Self-Construal influenced SSAB and self-enhancement significantly, and supported the viewpoint of cultural universalism referring to self-enhancement.

Key words: Self-Construal, Self-Serving Attributional Bias, Self-Enhancement, The thinking of ‘Zhongyong’