Introduction

Over the decades, scholars, journalists, policymakers, and the general public have acknowledged that China has become a significant superpower, which is widely considered ushering in a new global power distribution (Grosse et al. 2021; Tunsjø 2018; Zeng and Breslin 2016). As of 2024, China holds the position of the world’s second-largest economy, with a GDP of 18.53 trillion USD, trailing only the United States (International Monetary Fund, 2024). China’s increasing geopolitical assertiveness coincides with the rapid pace of its economic growth, which is conducive to the country’s development of soft power (Shambaugh 2015) and hard power (Grosse et al. 2021; Robertson & Sin, 2017). China has adopted a state-led soft power strategy aimed at projecting a positive national image on a global stage (Gao 2015, pp. 7–8). However, data suggest that China’s soft power efforts have had limited success with foreign audiences and have fallen short of its superpower ambitions. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, China ranked 27th in global soft power, while the United States ranked 5th (The Soft Power 30 2019). Previous studies suggest that China faces challenges stemming from inconsistencies in individual-level cognitive perceptions (Turcsanyi et al. 2021). Since soft power relies on persuasion and attraction, individual attitudes and perceptions are crucial for understanding its global impact. Although China’s soft power is not a new topic in academia and has attracted significant attention from the scholarly community, previous research has mainly focused on macro interactions and national-level impacts, rather than on individual-level perceptions (Ding 2006; Hunter 2009; Mirza et al. 2020). This study bridges micro-level individual perceptions with macro-level concepts in international relations. This study focuses on the dynamics of China’s soft power and its cultural promotion effects at the cognitive level. By examining the effects of China’s cultural soft power from an individual cognitive perspective, this study explored its international impact. The study investigates individuals “cognition wall,” inviting participants from different countries to express their attitudes towards the Confucius Institute based on China or Nye’s soft power mechanisms. The analysis also considers respondents’ nationalities and educational backgrounds to assess whether these factors influence their perceptions of China’s soft power. Ultimately, the study evaluates whether China’s state-led soft power approach is effective or whether it risks becoming self-defeating due to divergent individual perceptions.

Soft power and its understanding in China

In 1990, Joseph Nye challenged the prevailing belief that US strength was waning by introducing the concept of soft power (Nye 1990a; Ohnesorge, 2020a). In international politics, as opposed to hard power—which focuses on coercive actions to enforce national interests (Art, 1996; Wilson, 2008, p. 114)—soft power is the ability to obtain preferred outcomes by persuasion and attraction (Nye 2017, p. 1). It is shown in political, moral, or cultural influence, and is less resource-intensive and more manageable in case of failure (Bilgin and Elis 2008; Chen 2022; Eliküçük et al. 2020; Wilson 2008). Nye (2017, p. 2) emphasizes that soft power should originate from civil society rather than governments, since it mainly targets individuals, grassroots communities, and populations.

Contrary to Nye’s interpretation, Wang Huning’s “Chinese-styled version” of soft power focuses on culture as the primary driver and is considered a nation-led policy (Duarte and Ferreira-Pereira 2022; Glaser and Murphy 2009, pp. 110-111). Soft Power has gradually played a vital role in China’s aim of “peaceful rise.” Since Hu Jintao’s era, the CCP has promoted soft power as a national strategy (Edney 2015). Xi Jinping’s era has been framed as a cultural soft power aimed at reducing perceived threats and balancing regional alliances (Duan et al. 2023; Ma and Gu 2023; Edney 2015). Nowadays, China’s “cultural confidence” under the proclaimed ‘Chinese road’ and the effort to tell the ‘China story’ are widely promoted (Guo 2018; Li and Zhang 2019). It is believed that today, China owes its own story to the world: a story told from a Chinese perspective.

While Nye’s soft power framework emphasizes the role of civil society and non-state actors in creating influence through cultural and ideological appeal, Wang Huning’s interpretation emphasizes the role of the state and its strategic cultural policies. This fundamental divergence in approach reflects the inherently political nature of soft power and underscores the strategic complexity of its global application. Understanding these frameworks is essential for evaluating the efficacy of China’s state-led soft power initiatives and their reception by global audiences. This study engages with interpretations of soft power and conceptualizes cultural promotion initiatives as its central components, assessing their impact on global audiences across different paradigms.

What does culture and perception mean in soft power strategies?

Culture, characterized by behaviors specific to a group passed down through social learning, is molded by the framework of the social structure (Cantor and Whitehead 2013). It can be considered a bridge that links a nation’s policy on a macro level to the construction of individuals’ micro perceptions. In international relations, culture is a multidimensional concept that influences country interaction, agendas, and power dynamics. Culture is often examined and considered a crucial aspect of a country’s foreign policy (Waller 2009). Countries have adopted cultural diplomacy strategies to spread and promote their values, philosophies, and institutions to acquire recognition and support from other countries (Maack 2001). It is important to note that cultural diplomacy often leverages interactions among individuals rather than between nation-states. Societally, culture shapes individuals’ lives, cognitive patterns, and behaviors (Samovar et al. 2014). Through cultural mediation, there was a significant correlation between soft power projects and individual perceptions.

Cognitive mechanisms and bias in soft power

Human cognitive systems process external information, forming human sensation and perception (Krüger et al. 2022; Shi 2021, p. 16; Başar and Düzgün 2016). There is a vast gap between the enormous amount of data the external world provides and human’s limited capacity to process them (Carbon, 2014). The complex human brain possesses astonishing information-processing capabilities, with 100 billion (10^11) neurons and several hundred trillion synaptic connections, enabling it to process and exchange vast amounts of information within milliseconds (Rousselet et al. 2004). However, humans are not able to utilize the maximum of the brain because it is highly capacity-limited due to phenomena such as visual short-term memory (VSTM), psychological refractory period (PRP), and attentional blink (AB) (Marois and Ivanoff 2005). Humans have evolved perceptual mechanisms to identify the external world rather than directly access it; this is defined as perception (Carbon 2014, pp. 1-2; Gregory 2009; Jones et al. 2011). With different internal representations, humans form different knowledge structures and perceptions of the same objective issues (ibid.). The brain processes external information in two directions: bottom-up (data-driven) and top-down (model-driven) (Frackowiak et al. 2004). Under top-down processing, human beliefs and thoughts influence what they perceive in a non-trivial way owing to the penetrability of human perception (Raftopoulos et al. 2015; Stokes 2013). This dual-processing model highlights the role of prior knowledge in shaping perception, which is particularly relevant to how individuals interpret ideologically charged constructs, such as soft power.

As a non-coercive strategy, soft power imperceptibly affects individuals because our minds adopt knowledge structures that embed intangible values and equities (Kamali 2020. 11; Thomson 2020; Keller and Brexendorf 2017). In this case, Nye and Wang hold contrary interpretations of soft power orientations and mechanisms. People’s internal knowledge structures play a significant role in recognizing the external world through their subjective perception, and individuals naturally posit a preferentially endorsed viewpoint. Non-Chinese citizens, educated and immersed in Nye’s soft power theory, subtly perceived soft power as being led by society. Conversely, individuals from mainland China tend to perceive soft power as a domain that should be guided by the state, as the CCP has systematically fostered a sociocultural environment wherein cultural production is regulated by the government, and the promotion of cultural confidence is emphasized. At the theoretical level, under the different concepts of soft power, individuals bring themselves to a mental model conflict and create a sociocognitive barrier. Aligned with Johnson-Laird (1983), internal cognitive frameworks are formed through individual experiences that enable the interpretation and prediction of world phenomena. When novel information challenges entrenched mental models (Johnson-Laird 1983), cognitive systems initiate defense protocols characterized by selective assimilation (Held 2006) and conceptual recalibration (Hemforth and Konieczny, 2006). This self-preservation mechanism manifests itself through either active rejection (discarding dissonant data via attentional filtering) or passive distortion (reinterpreting inputs through existing schemata), effectively constructing epistemic buffers against paradigm shifts (Kahneman 2011). Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory. Such cognitive immunization processes—when applied to divergent conceptualizations of soft power (state-centric vs. society-oriented frameworks)—create fault lines in individual cognition, ultimately solidifying into a cognitive wall and emerging as neural substrates of belief perseverance. This means that the cognition wall is a habitual or entrenched belief rooted in one’s mental image that prevents clear thinking and hinders understanding (Maiese and Hanna, 2019). In general, beliefs and thoughts influence what we see, which is related to human cognitive penetrability (Raftopoulos et al. 2015; Stokes 2013). As part of the cognitive wall, cognitive penetrability occurs when humans systematically manipulate knowledge and beliefs to alter empirical phenomena (Raftopoulos 2019). For instance, Siegel’s (2013) “Angry Jack” cognitive model illustrates how the protagonist Jill’s preexisting belief that Jack harbors animosity toward her fosters persistent suspicion. This distortion of cognition endures, even when confronted with contradictory behavioral evidence, highlighting the power of deeply ingrained mental schemas in shaping perception over external reality. Simply put, in the cognitive penetrability of human perception, people’s internal knowledge structures play a significant role in recognizing the external world and perceiving the world with their subjective perception, rather than correctly understanding the world’s facts. In this case, the penetrability of perception causes humans to view one of the soft power mechanisms as a credible theory, resulting in varied reactions to cultural promotion programs.

Another cognition wall perspective is the confirmation bias. As the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs or hypotheses, confirmation bias occurs when an analyst knowingly or unknowingly seeks information that supports their beliefs and hypotheses (Koen and Bowers 2017, 2018; Nickerson 1998). Individuals displaying this bias are more prone to seek and assign more weight to information, thus confirming their perceptions (Klayman 1995; Oswald and Grosjean 2004). People react protectively if newly discovered knowledge contradicts their knowledge structure (Lack and Rousseau 2022). This bias may increase the gap in contradictory information by reinforcing individual’s pre-existing beliefs (Lord et al. 1979). Thus, owing to the contrasting foundations of China’s government-led soft power and Nye’s society-driven model, individuals are likely to perceive soft power in different ways.

Different soft power models lead to varied perceptions. Cognitive penetrability shapes how knowledge structures are formed, making one model of soft power appear to be more persuasive. Confirmation bias further reinforces these perceptions as individuals tend to defend and rationalize the soft power framework advanced by either Nye or Wang. This contributes to the formation of a cognition wall that divides audiences into distinct interpretive camps regarding the source and orientation of soft power. Individuals are more likely to respond positively to cultural promotion programs that align with the soft power model they are predisposed to accept, whether rooted in China’s state-led approach or Nye’s society-based theory.

Confucius institutes

As one of the most significant pieces of evidence of China’s cultural soft power, Confucius Institutes (CIs) are promoted as a base, platform, and bridge for the international promotion of the Chinese language and intercultural communication between Chinese and foreign cultures (Chen and Ha 2020, pp. 236-237). CIs have been determined as essential carriers of Chinese culture and reform pilots in education. Since the establishment of the first Confucius Institute in 2004, over 500 institutes have been operating globally, and the China Ministry of Education has funded them as affiliated organizations (Hanban 2019). Beijing has issued many policy documents to support the international promotion of the Chinese language and the development of Confucius Institutes, creating a comprehensive strategic layout for Chinese civilization to go global (Xinhua News Agency 2010; Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China 2021). However, since the 2010s, CIs have received numerous official and non-governmental criticisms from various nations. In 2006, New York University historian Jonathan Zimmerman issued a warning, claiming that CIs resembled the “Mussolini model” of the 1930s, which funded Italian language schools in America for fascist propaganda (Zimmerman 2006). In 2014, the American Association of University Professors Report claimed that “Confucius Institutes function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom” (Graham 2014). This study used Confucius Institutes as the scenario in the experiment to explore participants’ attitudes towards China’s soft power under different interpretations of the concept. The mixed reception of Confucius Institutes highlights the challenges and complexities of China’s state-led soft power initiatives, providing a critical lens through which to evaluate their effectiveness and global impact.

Hypotheses

  • Hypothesis 1 posits that Wang and Nye’s different soft power interpretations will lead to different attitudes and evaluations of Confucius Institutes due to their cognitive penetrability.

  • Hypothesis 2 suggests that individuals’ nationality, learning experiences, and interpretations of soft power influence their attitudes toward soft power programs.

  • Hypothesis 3 predicted that people with positive attitudes towards a country will subjectively recognize and agree with the country’s soft power projects to maintain cognitive consistency.

  • Hypothesis 4 asserts that participants will exhibit different attitudes towards the soft power of the US and China, reflecting the ideological and cultural differences between vertical collectivism and competitive individualism.

Method

Procedure

This study incorporated nationality (China/non-China), past learning experiences, and soft power interpretations. Owing to the lack of a specific political or cognitive psychology scale for soft power, the scale used was originally designed. The experiment contained one scale, divided into three sections: primary attitudes and evaluations of the US and China soft power programs, soft power case: Confucius Institutes, and an after-test, which anchors the first section. Participants were required to answer all the questions on the scale. The participants randomly received one of the soft power concept scenarios to avoid bias.

Participants’ nationality was categorized as being from China or from other parts of the world. As mentioned, the orientation and processing mechanism of soft power differs from those of China and Nye (originated and followed among Western nations). Participants’ nationality may influence their perception of different soft power mechanisms (Glaser and Murphy 2009, pp. 110-111; Nye 1990b, p. 167). Nationality was self-reported by respondents by filling in the blanks and then coded as numbers into two categories by the author. In this experiment, “1” represents China, and “2” represents non-Chinese nations. Participants past learning experiences also influenced their categorization of the materials. As noted in cognitive science, experts and novices tend to categorize and evaluate information based on various dimensions and perspectives (Chi et al. 1981). To account for this variation and avoid potential bias stemming from disciplinary expertise, participants with formal training in political science were coded as “1,” while those without such background were coded as “2.”

In the pretests, participants’ attitudes toward China and the United States were assessed based on their prior knowledge of each country. The pretests were divided into two parts: Personal Evaluation and Objective Situation Rating. In the personal evaluation part, respondents were asked to report their general impressions of China and the US and how they viewed US cultural promotion programs. To enhance the accessibility of the survey questions and better capture participants’ authentic perspectives, illustrative cases such as Panda Diplomacy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Hollywood, and Coca-Cola were incorporated as prompts for objective situation rating. Participants were requested to evaluate the influence of China/US soft power promotion programs and the frequency of Chinese/US engagement with American/Chinese cultural outreach programs. This experiment aimed to determine the consistency of participants’ objective recognition and subjective perceptions by conducting pretests. As hypothesized, individuals may show consistent attitudes toward the nation’s soft power programs and overall impressions.

Regarding the stimuli, participants were randomly exposed to two different soft power frameworks: one representing China’s state-led approach, and the other based on Nye’s society-driven model. Respondents were asked to complete the questionnaires based on the concept given after completing their primary evaluations of the China Soft Power Program (Confucius Institutes). Considering participants’ diverse learning backgrounds, this research used simple sentences to ensure that everyone could clearly understand the concept, rather than conducting professional terminology to make it precise but challenging. Both scenarios first introduced soft power to participants, which simply defined soft power as “the ability to obtain preferred outcomes by persuasion and attraction rather than coercion, payment, or force” (Nye 1990a, p. 166; Nye 2008, p. 94). To make participants understand better, soft power is also interpreted as “the ability to meet expectations through persuasion and attraction rather than coercion or force, using a cultural promotion, etc.” (Nye 2023, p. 48). Regarding the two soft power versions, half of the participants were exposed to Nye’s concept, whereas the second half was exposed to Wang’s national-led concept. In Nye’s scenario, the scale indicated that “Countries’ soft power originates from civil society rather than the governments. This idea has been widely applied in developed Western countries. For example, think of how Google impacts the world from the United States. Using Google as an example, the scale expected respondents to understand the type of social-led soft power promoters, such as multinational corporations (MNCs). Regarding China’s soft power, the scale introduced it as “The Chinese government defines soft power as state-led policies, and the government conducts relevant programs as the leader.” Peking believed that the variable in soft power promotion is that governments play a dominant role in the cultural promotion and control of soft power. Theoretically, based on two different concepts, participants will show differently when facing the Confucius Institutes Chinese cultural program. This scale reverses scoring for particular questions based on Nye’s interpretation. An attention-check question was also added to the questionnaire, asking participants to tick the targeted answer when they thoroughly read and understood it.

At the end of the survey, after being introduced to the concept of soft power, participants were asked to re-evaluate China’s cultural promotion programs using their earlier responses as a cognitive anchor. This experiment incorporated stimuli effects to examine whether they influenced participants’ knowledge structures and perceptions towards the same soft power concepts and cultural promotion programs.

Measures

All questions in the scale (except for participants’ nationality and past learning experiences) were evaluated using a 5-point Likert scale. The Likert Scale is advantageous in showing an individual’s overall attitudes in an experiment and is easy to calculate (Jamieson 2004). Participants’ scores were averaged to examine their attitudes toward two different soft power concepts. The reliability and validity of the scale were also investigated. The scale’s internal consistency (Cronbach alpha) is 0.69, and the KMO value is 0.81, which can be trusted. The Confucius Institutes section on individual attitudes toward soft power was also examined. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.80, and the KMO value was 0.82. Considering the specificity of this experiment, this new scale showed high reliability and validity (George and Mallery 2003), which provides a solid foundation for data analysis, and can be duplicated in future research.

Results

By using SPSS27.0 to proceed with the data, this study aimed to examine the effects of different soft power interpretations on the perceptions of Confucius Institutes. Univariate analysis of variance was used to analyze the differences among the means, as shown in Table 1. Moreover, the two interpretations of soft power, the core independent variable in this research, needed an independent-sample t test to examine their impact on individual attitudes toward Confucius Institutes. The results of the t-test are presented in Table 2. Correlation and linear regression were incorporated to examine Hypothesis 4 to see the strength of an association between people’s attitudes towards China and the US, and to predict Hypothesis 3 to see if participants’ subjective ratings would affect their attitudes towards China and the objective situation of the US soft power programs (see Tables 3–5).

Table 1 The ANOVA of between-subjects effects.
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Table 2 Independent samples test on participant’s attitudes.
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Table 3 The correlation of participants’ attitudes towards nations.
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Table 4 Participants’ cognition of the US.
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Table 5 Participants’ cognition of China.
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Participants

After data cleaning, 135 participants were recruited through the Qualtrics professional psychology questionnaire platform. This information is consistent with the data presented in Table 6. Of the participants, 83.7% were from China (Mainland) (n = 113) and 16.3% were international participants from countries such as Italy, Greece, and Singapore (n = 22). As indicated in the second part of Table 6, regarding their past learning experience, 101 respondents reported that they had not systematically learned political science before, and 34 participants had systematically learned related knowledge such as sociology and International Relations. As shown in Table 7, 68 participants received China’s national-led soft power ideology with a Mean of 3.46, and 67 participants were exposed to Nye’s original social-led soft power with a mean of 2.73. The results shows that participants under Nye’s guidance scored lower than those in the Chinese concept group.

Table 6 Descriptive statistics of participants’ nationality and past learning experiences.
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Table 7 Descriptive statistics of participants’ attitudes towards confucius institutes under different scenarios.
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General between-subjects effect

This section investigates the influence of participants’ attitudes towards Chinese Confucius Institutes, considering the interactions among nationality, educational background, and diverse interpretations of soft power concepts, as illustrated in Table 1. An ANOVA test was conducted, with F = 0.008, p = 0.929 (p > 0.05). In this case, the results showed no significant interactions with Confucius Institutes between nationality, past learning, and soft power concepts. Similarly, interactions involving the two variables were also found to be insignificant. Interactions between independent variables, Nationality, and Soft Power Concept revealed F = 0.11, p = 0.853 (p > 0.05). Similarly, the effects between the variables of Nationality and Learning background were F = 1.67, p = 0.19 (p > 0.5). In the interactions between participants’ learning backgrounds and different soft power interpretations, F = 0.49, p = 0.48 (p > 0.05). The results demonstrate that the interactions among the three independent variables did not significantly influence participants’ attitudes towards Confucius Institutes. The ANOVA primarily revealed that the core independent variable, diverse interpretations of soft power, significantly affected participants’ attitudes towards Confucius Institutes (see Table 1).

Main effect on soft power interpretations

Based on the previous F-test results, the study furthered the effects of the two different soft power interpretations on participants’ attitudes toward Confucius Institutes. The results are presented in Table 2.

Initially, Levene’s Test for Equality of Variances was assessed: F = 0.317, p = 0.575 (p > 0.05), confirming that the variances across the samples were homogeneous. Regarding the independent samples test, the result indicated t = 6.557, p < 0.001 (see Table 2), that the two interpretations of soft power significantly differed in the participants’ attitudes towards China’s soft power program. Participants exposed to Nye’s interpretation exhibited more negative attitudes towards Confucius Institutes compared to those exposed to Wang’s concept. Despite statistical significance, the effect size was also substantial, with Cohen’s d at 0.65, indicating a high degree of practical significance, as evidenced in the second section of Table 2.

Participants attitudes towards the US and China Soft Power

The study also treated the pretest as a separate component to examine differences in participants’ attitudes toward the United States and China. In the 135 responses, participants showed a more positive view of the US and its cultural promotion programs than of China’s soft power projects. A Pearson Correlation Coefficient was conducted, and the results showed r = –0.21, p = 0.013 (p < 0.05), which showed a low correlation. As shown in Table 3, This correlation was too weak to be considered a practical finding in this experiment and was not included in this study.

Participant’s cognitive conformity level

As mentioned in the hypothesis, it is crucial to examine the participants’ cognitive dissonance levels. This study conducted two subjective attitude questions and two objective situation rating questions on US/China cultural promotion and their overall performance. The numerical results of participants’ conformity levels are presented in Tables 3 and 4. Both Chinese and US numerical data showed a significant consistency between participants’ subjective ratings and objective situation evaluation. Regarding the US, the regression result coefficients = 0.33, p < 0.001, and for China’s results, coefficients = 0.32, p < 0.001. Thus, there was no cognitive dissonance, and the results were consistent with the theoretical cognition pattern.

Discussion

Over the decades, China has become a superpower and is considered to be ushering in a new global power distribution (Grosse et al. 2021; Tunsjø 2018; Zeng and Breslin 2016). China’s increasing geopolitical engagement coincided with its economic growth, reflecting its developing soft power (Shambaugh 2015). However, China’s soft power development is unsatisfactory, and its international image continues to be mixed (Breslin 2020. 137). First, the experiment incorporated the participants’ nationalities and past learning experiences in the questionnaire. The results of this study do not suggest the significance of such factors, which rejects Hypothesis 1. This finding can be explained by the sample size of this research and cultural-related psychological theories. Regarding the learning experience dimension, its interaction with the different soft power interpretation scenarios was insignificant. The pretests used the US as an example because the originator of soft power, Joseph Nye, is from the US. However, most international participants were not from the United States, although they shared the same view of the social-led type of soft power because of the US sphere of influence. A cultural orientation can also explain this situation. In our research, participants were from European countries such as Italy and Asian countries such as Singapore, which are more culturally collectivist (Burton et al. 2021; Soh and Leong 2002). The taxonomy of culture can generally be divided into two categories: individualism and collectivism (Lee & Choi 2005). Currently, a more comprehensive cultural structure has been built with four types of cultures: vertical individualism (achievement-oriented), horizontal individualism (uniqueness), vertical collectivism (dutifulness), and horizontal collectivism (cooperativeness) (Schermer et al. 2023; Singelis et al. 1995). Italy and Singapore hold a more collectivist culture, but the United States is notable for its vertical individualism, where inequality is accepted and individual competence is rewarded (Ibid). The research finding that nationality should not be considered in soft power promotion cases can also be found in supporting evidence of Starbucks entering Italy compared to China. As mentioned, China holds the state-led soft power view, and Italy is under Nye’s social-led cultural promotion philosophy. Starbucks, one of the most famous US soft power promotion companies, is welcoming (Glowik 2017), while Italians do not seem to accept it (Nazarena 2021). From the Chinese perspective, it is noted that both Italy and Singapore are developed Western countries. However, they still hold significant cultural differences and preferences, which lead to alternate attitudes towards the US soft power programs and cause insignificant results.

Secondly, consistent with hypothesis 1, participants who received Nye’s interpretation had a negative attitude towards the Confucius Institutes compared to respondents who were exposed to Wang’s interpretations. The findings indicate that participants in nations with Nye’s social-led soft power views (worldwide except China) held negative attitudes towards China’s cultural promotion programs and did not accept the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s stale-led style soft power projects. It should be noted that soft power programs interact between the nation-state, as the provider, and individuals, as the receiver, on micro levels. The key difference in such interactions is that cultural diplomacy policies and programs are conducted via collaborative efforts under different actors, which makes the final decision more rational and maximizes profit (Isar and Triandafyllidou 2021). However, such strategies and mechanisms are not applicable to individuals’ decision processes since humans are predictably irrational. The two interpretations of soft power create a cognition wall, which is significantly shown in this study. Under this intellectual obstacle, people’s decisions are based on their knowledge structure, which leads to cognitive penetrability and determines the case: Confucius Institutes, under the guidance of the provided soft power interpretation. In addition, the findings also confirm the validity of the individual’s availability heuristic. The scale has a limited time interval between the scenario and Confucius Institutes-related questions. Thus, participants were required to make their decisions in an abbreviated period, and they would inherently be biased toward recently acquired information, which in this case, is the interpretation of soft power by Nye or Wang. The impact of the availability heuristic should not be underestimated. The perceived magnitude of the consequences of an action is strongly correlated with their mental availability, which plays a vital role in individuals’ decision-making process (Schwarz et al. 1990; Todd 2001; Tversky and Kahneman 1973). Combining both cognitive penetrability as the fundamental theory and availability as the practical implications, the findings could argue that China’s soft power promotion programs are not efficient and successful when facing individuals who hold the perceptions with the characteristics of Nye’s social-led soft power interpretation. Exacerbating this dilemma is the fact that only China is currently implementing state-led soft power propaganda strategies, while most developed countries are under the influence of Nye. On the cognitive level, it can be argued that the feasibility of China’s soft power programs is exceptionally low, and it is difficult to realize its role; receivers from other nations naturally hold a negative attitude when they face China’s soft power programs, such as Confucius Institutes.

From the study results, under the society of Nye’s Soft power interpretation, it is the mistake and failure of the overall policy-making philosophy of China’s soft power promotion. In this research, the subjects did not recognize China’s soft power development program from the theoretical origination dimension. At the cognitive level, such a soft power communication program was labeled with opposing ideas and opinions, which made the subsequent promotion of the program even more difficult. Such situations exist in this experiment and have lasted for a long time. China’s perceived influence, especially in soft power, is declining in the developed countries. Silver et al. (2020) research also substantiates the situation that most people in countries such as the UK, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Japan had positive opinions of China in 2002; however, public opinion had turned negative in each of these nations in 2020. Even in Germany, which has always supported communication with Beijing, 71% of respondents in 2020 had an unfavorable opinion of China (Ibid). On the cognitive dimension, we could argue that the developed ci knowledge structure towards China has changed and turned to a negative view since China has increasingly used nationalistic tones and has been called “World Wolf-Warriors.” Leino (2021) also argued that China’s soft power strategies face challenges balancing domestic nationalism and international partnership construction. The present findings of our research show that China’s construction in the face of global partnership is not yet a success, and the balance has not yet been achieved, with nationalism still seeming to be the more potent force. It can be foreseen that if China still maintains its current soft power strategies, China’s international image will inevitably decrease and will not be accepted by the global community.

To support the argument that the individual’s knowledge structure plays a vital role in receiving China’s soft power programs, this research also examined the correlation between respondents’ subjective rating towards nations and the evaluation of their soft power programs’ exact situation. As hypothesized, individual’s impressions of the US/China are aligned with their assessment of the nation’s soft power programs situation. The findings of this research have proved hypothesis 3. The result supported the confirmation bias theory, as mentioned in the previous part that people tend to seek out, interpret, and memorize information as a way of confirming their pre-existing expectations or beliefs and ignore information that contradicts their beliefs (Koen and Bowers 2017, 2018; Nickerson 1998). People are not as objective as we believe and behave in predictable, irrational ways. When evaluating soft power programs, it is not enough to focus only on objective data such as the number of Confucius Institute programs, cooperation programs, and student numbers. This finding also supports the idea that China’s soft power programs, such as the Confucius Institutes, cannot be considered successful, even though China has invested a lot and actively improved its international image. The negative image of the “China Wolf-Warrior” has been spread worldwide, shaping people’s perceptions (Leino 2021). These conditions are likely to exacerbate the challenges facing China’s soft power initiatives, ultimately undermining its attempts to shape a positive global image.

Implications

Though China’s soft power is not a new topic and has been studied a lot, previous studies are most focused on soft power macro interaction and impact on national levels rather than narrowing it down to the individual, i.e., individual actor level (Ding 2006; Hunter 2009; Mirza et al. 2020). As mentioned, this research bridges the gap between the development of China’s cultural soft power from an individual cognitive perspective, combining cognitive psychology to explore the international impact of China’s soft power. This study uniquely focuses on the origins of China’s soft power and examines China’s cultural promotion effect on the cognitive dimension. It explores whether the sole nation-led soft power can successfully persuade citizens from other countries with social-led soft power.

Over 80% of participants in previous cognitive science and psychology studies have typically come from WEIRD populations—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—which represent only about 12% of the global population (Henrich et al. 2010). In contrast, this study deliberately avoids relying on WEIRD samples and instead seeks to provide a broader and more representative understanding of global perceptions of China’s soft power initiatives.

Limitations and future directions

While this study uniquely explores individual’s cognitive mechanisms under two different soft power interpretations and examines China’s soft power promotion effects on perception level, the results need to proceed with caution. Although this paper used widely recognized cultural promotion programs and ancient traditional literature examples to avoid cultural misunderstanding, cultural variability may have influenced the outcomes of this cross-cultural experiment, as participants’ responses could reflect culturally specific values and communication norms that standardized instruments may fail to capture or interpret in a culturally neutral way. As Hofstede and Bond (1984) and Triandis (1982) have noted, cultural dimensions—particularly variations in vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism—may influence how participants interpret and respond to survey measures. For example, individuals from vertical collectivist cultures like China may prioritize hierarchy and dutifulness (Chen et al. 2022), whereas participants from more individualistic societies such as the US may approach the questionnaire with different ideological assumptions and response tendencies.

Additionally, positive or negative bias also needs to be noticed in this experiment as well since the questionnaires are self-reported by the participants. When facing a specific case, individuals may not be as objective in making choices and may present a not entirely factual image of the questions, which causes polarization (Sears, 1983; Unkelbach et al. 2020).

Soft power has been extensively studied over the past few decades, with much attention given to its macro-level implementation through state-led initiatives. However, as previously discussed, cultural promotion is not solely a state-to-state endeavor; individuals actively engage in cross-cultural exchanges, highlighting the need to investigate soft power at the micro level—an area that remains relatively underexplored. While the current sample is predominantly composed of participants from mainland China, this does not undermine the study’s validity. On the contrary, China’s unique ideological position on soft power and its active cultural diplomacy makes it an especially valuable and illustrative case. Moreover, participants from regions including Western Europe, the Americas, and Southeast Asia were also incorporated to provide preliminary cross-cultural perspectives. Future research will expand this comparative framework by incorporating more Western-aligned ideological groups to enhance the generalizability of findings. Importantly, this study introduces a micro-level perspective for examining soft power - not merely as a state-driven strategy, but as a dynamic process shaped by individual perception and cognition. Future research may build on this approach to investigate soft power beyond institutional frameworks (e.g., Confucius Institutes), advancing a more nuanced understanding of how cultural influence is internally interpreted and experienced at the individual level. Additionally, different types of stakeholders may hold diverse attitudes and perceptions toward China’s soft power initiatives. Given the lack of questionnaires that assess individual-level attitudes toward soft power, future research should develop or refine more valid, reliable, and comprehensive scales that incorporate factors such as age, place of residence (urban vs. rural), and other relevant demographic variables, in order to explore potential mediating and moderating effects within soft power dynamics.

Conclusion

In China, soft power has become a state-led strategy and a core pillar of its foreign policy to promote Chinese culture and enhance Beijing’s international image. Nowadays, China’s international image is deteriorating, and there is the need to rethink the impact of its soft power. Taking the Confucius Institutes as an example, this paper discusses individual attitudes and perceptions of China’s state-led soft power at the cognitive level. It argues that China’s soft power efforts at the cognitive level are not efficient and can be considered a failure. The different interpretations of soft power have created a significant cognition wall. Receivers have formed a fixed cognitive structure, and when they are confronted with a vastly different soft power ideology, this existing cognitive barrier makes it difficult for them to accept it. Without a critical re-conceptualization of China’s soft power strategy, there is a risk that negative perceptions among target audiences will continue to intensify, potentially undermining the long-term effectiveness of such efforts.