Studies conducted in individualistic cultures have found that individuals tend to believe that choices made intuitively better reflect their true selves. To test whether this conclusion can be generalized to collectivist cultures, experiments were conducted in China, a typical collectivist culture. Experiment 1 replicated previous studies, using a product choice task and instructions to trigger the decision-making process. Experiment 2 and 3 expanded the task domain, manipulated decision-making process through decision time, and measured the confidence in the choices. The results indicated that under a collectivist culture, individuals believed that choices made after deliberation better reflected their true selves, with choice confidence serving as a mediator. These findings preliminarily reveal cultural differences in people’s belief that whether intuitive or deliberative choices better reflect their true self, and deepen the understanding of differences in the true self under individualistic-collectivist cultures.

intuition, deliberation, true self, choice confidence