The Structure And Function Of Self-confidence

Self-confidence was a widely used concept in various discipline, it was also a trait used in everyday life rooted in Chinese culture. Self-confidence is important to indigenous personality theory, and the practice of education could find useful suggestion from researches in this area.According to Huang's Perfect Personality theory, self-confidence is "Suring about one's ability and judgment". This understanding wasn't come from positive research but logical and deduce. The main aim of this dissertation was giving an indigenous definition of self-confidence from the perspective of personality, and trying to show its structure, features and functions.In the literature, philology and psychology have the same understanding of self-confidence, but their definitions were not same. And there are some confusion among self-confidence, self-esteem and self-efficacy; some researchers even used one of these three to replace another. We can understand the character of self-confidence from different views, such as process vs. result, state vs. trait, moderated vs. overconfidence, domain specific vs. domain general. When we used the general function of self as reference, self-confidence may have four functions, including self regulation, self value identity, knowledge frame, and mental health. Self-confidence comes from the interaction between mature and environment. As a personality trait, self-confidence is stable across long time; it also fluctuates according to one's own state and situation. The findings of past research concert on its character and group differences.In this paper, four studies were designed to explore the implicit theory of self-confidence, operational definition, functions and its complexity.Section one has two studies, focusing on the implicit theory of self-confidence.First study used open-ended questionnaire "Experience of Self-Confidence", and second study used "Twenty Self-Confidence Statements Test", which was revised from "who am I", Content analysis show that self-confidence's meaning, structure, and features can be get from self-report. Results show that the core connotation of self-confidence is positive assessment on oneself. These assessments can be found in everyday experience, especially in interpersonal, character, health, which could be composed several themes. The data also shows that one's self-confidence may be different in clarity, stability and complexity.Section two try to get to the bottom of the operational definition of self-confidence, includes six studies.Study A developed a comprehensive self-confidence questionnaire. Item selection based on Huang's Perfect Personality theory and development tasks. In the questionnaire, five domains were emphasized, including how to deal with the challenge of the world, others, self, future, and frustration. For the five parts, the questionnaire called as five dimensions self-confidence questionnaires, FDSC for short. Used filed test, item analysis, factor analysis, retest reliability, alpha coefficient, confirm factor analysis, and correlation with Undergraduate Self-Confidence Questionnaire, all the analysis support the structure and validity of FDSC. Study B designed a short self-confidence scale. Used same procedure as FDSC, we obtained 12-item scale, and named it general self-confidence scale.Study C to F investigates the convergent and discriminate validity of the designed self-confidence questionnaire. The criterions we used include generalized self-efficacy, confidence inhibition, self-doubt, judgment self-doubt, self-esteem, and self-worth. Results show all the correlations between self-confidence and the criterions consistent with hypotheses.Section Three examined the functions of self-confidence. The function hypothesis obtained on the basis of the classification of Huang's Perfect Personality theory, from health to subject wellbeing. This section includes six studies.Study A tested the relationship between self-confidence and other issues of health, such as self-report health status, indisposition during last two months and depression. Evidence suggested an association of trait self-confidence and lower morbidity. Study B concerned the relationship between confidence and copying style, and found that self-confidence positively related to problem solving and independent to emotion copying. This finding explained the health function of self-confidence from the perspective of self-protect and self-development. Study C used interpersonal trust scale, and perceived social support scale to demonstrate that self-confidence is the basis of interpersonal relationship and social support; this relationship and high social support also provide evidence for health function of self-confidence. Study D investigated the relationship between self-confidence and self-esteem, self-worth, subject wellbeing, life satisfaction and happiness. Structure equation model showed that self-confidence was a good predictor to subject wellbeing, and was a mediator variable between self-esteem and subject wellbeing. Function of academic achievement and self-confidence was investigated in Study E, results showed that self-confidence was not contribute to academic achievement, some dimensions of FDSC even has negative correlation to scores. Study F concerned the comprehensive function of self-confidence; achievement motivation and Type A behavior were considered. Self-confidence was correlated with individual oriented achievement motivation, and not correlated with social oriented achievement motivation; correlated positively with time pressure and competitive, negatively with hostility; and the partially correlation matrix show that time pressure and competitive can be explained partly by achievement motivation. Those findings suggest that self-confidence is an individual oriented trait. If a person is self-confident, he can avoid Type A behavior's side effect and foster positive factor, which could benefit to his health and personal achievement.Section Four focuses on the moderator factors of self-confidence, three perspectives were included in this section, and they are character of self-confidence, the position of self-confidence in self-presentation, and the interaction of self-confidence and environment.Clarity is a structural character of self-confidence, and Study A found that clarity was a good predictor of mental health among undergraduate. To explore the function of clarity in this relationship, self developed clarity of self-confidence questionnaire, together with the GHQ-20 were applied to undergraduates. The result showed that: clarity was partially a mediator variable between self-confidence and GHQ-anxiety, GHQ-depression, GHQ-sense of adequacy. Self monitor theory suggested that low self-monitor people concern more about their inner felling and personal trait during their self presentation. Study B finds that self-confidence was correlated positively with self-monitor, while high monitor group don't have relation with confidence, which suggest that self-confidence serves as a result of self presentation, not a reason. In study C, task difficult was classified into 3 levels, experiment result showed that self-confidence influenced middle difficult task performance via situation confidence; which suggest that self-confidence's function as a personality trait is confined by circumstance.In the last part, the dissertation gave a comprehensive discussion, all the findings in this paper and former study support the indigenous definition of self-confidence from personality perspective. That was, self-confidence was assurance about one's ability and judgment. The main feature of self-confidence are individual, stability, clarity and motivating, the functions include benefit to one's health, mental health, interpersonal relationship, positive coping style and subject wellbeing, which all proved self-confidence as a cardinal adaptable personality trait and its function. At last, the limitation and future research suggestion were discussed in the frame of personality.