People use control strategies to improve their physical as well as interpersonal situations. Previous research has maintained that Japanese, compared with North Americans, are more oriented toward secondary control (changing oneself) than primary control (changing one’s circumstances). However, Heckhausen and Schulz’s work suggests dominance of primary control over secondary control across cultures. The conflicting views regarding Japanese control orientations are reconciled by considering situational variation. Based on an extended framework of primary control, two empirical studies examined the alternative hypothesis that control orientation would be affected by perceived urgency and concern about harmony maintenance. Study 1 used open-ended questions (n = 171) to validate the extended primary control taxonomy, and revealed that participants’ control orientations were influenced by their subjective urgency of control and perceived difficulty in maintaining interpersonal harmony. Study 2 (n = 246) replicated the latter results with Likert-type scale ratings. These results support the extended framework of primary control and identify two situational predictors of control orientation.

Individuals exercise control over themselves, others, and environment. According to a seminal work by Weisz, Rothbaum, and Blackburn, which represents a Western view, people in the West prefer to control others or environment to make their life more comfortable (primary control), whereas people in the East prefer to control themselves to fit into environment (secondary control). This chapter critically examines the Western conceptualization of control. Then an alternative view based on Asian value system is presented. According to this view, East–West differences exist not in the target of control (oneself vs. others or environment) but in how people attempt to control others and their environment. The authors present empirical evidence to support the alternative view and propose a framework to understand individuals’ seeking for psychological well-being in the East and West. Westerners (especially North Americans) prefer to control the environment so that they can feel autonomous, whereas Easterners (especially Japanese) care more about consequences of control in terms of interpersonal harmony.

The Implicit Association Test of Shyness (Shyness IAT: Aikawa & Fujii, 2011) provides an indirect assessment of shyness by measuring associations of self (vs. other) with shyness-related (vs sociability-related) words. In this study we examined the test-retest reliability of the Shyness IAT. Thirty-five participants responded twice to the Shyness IAT with a time lag of one month. The correlation coefficient between the two time points was .54 (p = .001), confirming an adequate level of test-retest reliability. Indeed, changes in explicit and implicit shyness between the two time points were not related to sociable behavior during the one month period. Implications of the results for the assessment of personalities using IATs as well as relevant future directions are discussed.

It is often assumed that East Asians, compared with Westerners, try to reshape their personal attitudes and expectations to fit the environment rather than attempting to influence realities. A recent review of the literature revises this idea by suggesting that East Asians, just like Westerners, do attempt to influence existing realities, but via subtly different routes: East Asians employ indirect strategies, seek support from influential others, or take a long-term approach to changing the world via self-improvement. This chapter discusses East Asians’ tendency to employ various tactics in association with dialecticism, and their default cognitive mode of understanding the self, others, and the environment as changeable, connected, and contradictory. Along with collectivist and interdependent cultural characteristics, dialecticism may have additive or interactive effects on control experiences and psychological functioning in East Asia.

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