A Cross-Cultural Study Of The Implicit Theory Of Wisdom In Chinese And German College Students

Wisdom is one of the hotspots of Psychological research, which can be divided into two areas --- "implicit" and "explicit". Implicit theory refers to the view about some mental structure or factor retained by some form in the individual brains, which has been formed under the background of people's daily life and work. This research has carried on the cross-cultural discussion to implicit theory of wisdom about the Sino-German university students. After analyzing the related research background in detail, on the basis of "a wisdom theory of the integration of virtue and talent", using empirical methods, this research discusses the similarities and differences about implicit theory of wisdom of the Sino-German university students. The empirical investigation was separated into five branches:(1) cross-cultural "wiseman nomination" research of Sino-Gennan university students; (2) cross-cultural research on implicit concept about "wisdom" of Sino-German university students; (3) implicit theory of factors that may affect "the formation of wisdom":Sino-German cross-cultural research; (4) moral wisdom and natural wisdom:Sino-German cross-cultural research on implicit theory of factors that may affect the evaluation of wisdom; (5) the evaluation of wisdom influenced by target character information: cross-cultural research on Sino-German university students.In Research 1, it's introduced by the open-questionnaire about wiseman of 153 Chinese students and 102 German students, and the results show:(1) both Chinese and German subjects memorize more about the wiser with moral wisdom:(2) Chinese are better at moral wisdom than westerner, while westerner are better at natural wisdom; (3) collect 50 described units by nominated wisers and 25 described units of influenced factors that acquired wisdom, which will be the material for the subsequent researches.In Research 2, using self-compiled Likert questionnaire, it's introduced by the investigation about 411 Chinese university students and 420 German university students' implicit concept of wisdom. After the exploratory-factor analysis, confirmatory-factor analysis and simultaneous analysis of several groups of structural equation model, the results show:(1) the implicit concept of wisdom for Sino-German university students includes two aspects ---be good at "zuoren" and "zuoshi", and can be separated into "Interpersonal manner", "characteristics of behavior", "personality", "interpersonal ability" and "erudition" altogether 5 parts; (2) the effects of "sweet grapes" enable the Chinese university students to take "characteristics of behavior" more seriously to some extent, while the German university students relatively takes "erudition" more seriously; (3) university students of both countries have the obvious differences in the relative influence of certain projects.Using the same techniques and subjects as Research 2, Research 3 discusses which factors influence the formation of wisdom in university students'opinions of two countries, and the results show:(1) the implicit theory of factors that influence Sino-German university students' acquisition of wisdom are approximately the inner controllable factors, including "benevolence morals", "knowledge and thought", "manner and faith" as well as "experience"; (2) the cultural differences result in the comparison between "manner and faith" and "experience", the Chinese subjects take the former more seriously, while the German subjects focus on the latter; (3) university students of both countries have the obvious differences in the relative influence of certain projects.Research 4 tries to construct the path-model for factors that influence people to evaluate others'levels of wisdom; the same subjects and similar techniques of data analysis are applied to this research, and the self-compiled questionnaire includes two parts, the first one is the story about wisemen, and the second includes Likert projects; the results show:(1) the path-model of wisdom evaluation from various wisemen has both similarities and differences; (2) path-model of the Sino-German university student's wisdom evaluation has both similarities and differences.Research 5 attempts to use the quasi-emperimental method to investigte the target character information's influence to its evaluation of wisdom level by others; the subjects are the same as above, the composition of stories is similar to Research 4; with the analysis of variance, the results show:(1) the target's age, gender and type of wisdom have the remarkable influence to evaluation of wisdom level; (2) the nationality and the age of target has the remarkable interaction effect.