A meta-analysis of published cross-cultural studies of self-enhancement reveals pervasive and pronounced differences between East Asians and Westerners. Across 91 comparisons, the average cross-cultural effect was d = .84. The effect emerged in all 30 methods, except for comparisons of implicit self-esteem. Within cultures, Westerners showed a clear self-serving bias (d = .87), whereas East Asians did not (d = -.01), with Asian Americans falling in between (d = .52). East Asians did self-enhance in the methods that involved comparing themselves to average but were self-critical in other methods. It was hypothesized that this inconsistency could be explained in that these methods are compromised by the “everyone is better than their group’s average effect” (EBTA). Supporting this rationale, studies that were implicated by the EBTA reported significantly larger self-enhancement effect for all cultures compared to other studies. Overall, the evidence converges to show that East Asians do not self-enhance.

Individualism-collectivism is one of the best researched dimensions of culture in psychology. One frequently asked but underexamined question regards its cross-temporal changes: Are cultures becoming individualistic? One influential theory of cultural change, modernization theory, predicts the rise of individualism as a consequence of economic growth. Findings from past research are generally consistent with this theory, but there is also a body of evidence suggesting its limitations. To examine these issues, cross-temporal analyses of individualism-collectivism in the United States and Japan were conducted. Diverging patterns of cultural changes were found across indices: In both countries, some of the obtained indices showed rising individualism over the past several decades, supporting the modernization theory. However, other indices showed patterns that are best understood within the frameworks of a shifting focus of social relationships and a persisting cultural heritage. A comprehensive theory of cultural change requires considerations of these factors in addition to the modernization effect.

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Much recent research suggests that North Americans more frequently experience approach motivations and East Asians more frequently experience avoidance motivations. The current research explores some cognitive implications of this cultural difference. North Americans should be more attentive to approach-oriented information, whereas East Asians should be more attentive to avoidance-oriented information. Three studies confirmed this hypothesis. When asked to recall information framed in either approach or avoidance terms, a predicted interaction between culture and information frame was observed (Study 1 and 2). Moreover, analyses of consumer book reviews found that among reviews that were rated as helpful, approach-focused content was more prevalent in American reviews compared to Japanese reviews, in which avoidance-focused content was more prevalent (Study 3). Findings from the current research add to the growing literature of cross-cultural research on approach-avoidance motivations.

For the last several decades, Chinese society has experienced transformative changes in its social ecology. Is Chinese culture more individualistic today as a result? The current research examined this question by cross-temporally examining the usage of Chinese personal pronouns associated with individualism-collectivism. A Chinese corpus encompassing the period from 1950 to 2008 was analyzed using the Google Ngram Viewer. Cross-temporal changes in the usages of personal pronouns conceptually associated with individualism-collectivism were nonlinear and highly similar to the patterns found for pronouns and non-pronoun words unassociated with individualism-collectivism. Follow-up analyses that disentangled these patterns indicated an increasing usage of individualistic pronouns and a decreasing usage of collectivistic pronouns in recent decades.

In a Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article, Sedikides, Gaertner and Vevea (2005) presented two meta-analyses that included eight papers to investigate the question of whether people from Eastern cultures self-enhance more for traits that they view to be important compared to those that they view as unimportant. The results supported their hypothesis: Self-enhancement appears to be pancultural. However, this conclusion is severely compromised by six relevant papers that are not included in their meta-analyses. Importantly, all of these six studies contradicted their hypothesis. When complete meta-analyses are conducted which include all of the relevant papers, a very different pattern of results emerges. Eastern and Western cultures do not differ from each other in the pattern of their self-enhancement of independent and interdependent traits. Furthermore, whereas Westerners self-enhanced significantly more for traits that they viewed to be especially important, East Asians did not. Contrary to the Sedikides et al. (2005) suggestion, the existing evidence suggests substantial crosscultural variation in self-enhancement, with Westerners being far more self-enhancing than Easterners. Reasons for the conflicting pattern of findings across methods and meta-analyses are discussed.

This research examined the relationship between social class and generalized trust, or a belief that others have a benign intention in social interactions, in a diverse set of societies represented in the World Values Survey. The strength of the relationship varied significantly across societies: Although social class was a positive predictor of generalized trust in wealthy countries, as reported in past research, among less wealthy countries social class was uncorrelated with trust. These results indicate that resources available to individuals of high social class may make a trusting belief more rewarding; nevertheless, in less wealthy societies, the socio-political-economic infrastructure that supports generalized trust is unavailable, and therefore even individuals of high social class are reluctant to trust others. This finding extends prior theorizing on trust in finding the interactive relationship between an individual-level factor and a society-level factor in shaping individuals’ inclination toward trust.

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people’s highest social priorities.