A cross-cultural investigation of metamotivational knowledge of construal level in the United States and Japan.

Abstract

Metamotivation refers to the beliefs and mechanisms by which people regulate their motivational states to achieve desired ends. Recent metamotivation research demonstrates that Westerners recognize the benefits of engaging in high-level and low-level construal (i.e., motivational orientations toward abstract, essential vs. concrete, idiosyncratic features) for performance on various tasks. We present the first cross-cultural investigation of this knowledge of how to create such construal level task-motivation fit in Eastern and Western cultures. Two studies reveal that American and Japanese participants similarly understand the benefits of high-level versus low-level construal. American and Japanese participants also similarly recognize the various strategies with which to induce high-level versus low-level construal—for example, thinking about why versus how (Study 1) and engaging in global versus local visual processing (Study 2). Study 2 also suggests that this metamotivational knowledge in both cultures may guide people’s preferences for these preparatory strategies when anticipating different performance tasks. Taken together, the current research provides preliminary evidence of cross-cultural consistency in metamotivational knowledge of the benefits of high-level and low-level construal and the functional role of this metamotivational knowledge in goal pursuit.

Thinking about thinking: People underestimate how enjoyable and engaging just waiting is.

“…This is consistent with previous findings on the cross-cultural consistency on people’s perceived enjoyment during waiting periods (Buttrick et al, 2019), but the current study extended its scope from actual experiences to metacognitive accuracy about just thinking. Our results also join recent emerging findings showing the cross-cultural consistency of metamotivational beliefs on other domains (Murayama et al, 2016; Nguyen et al, 2020). However, one notable observation is that, while we found a consistent relative underestimation effect across Japanese and United Kingdom samples, the Japanese sample showed lower absolute magnitude of ratings than the United Kingdom sample for both predicted and experienced task motivation (see Figures 2–4 and 6 for Japanese sample and Figure 5 for the United Kingdom sample).…”

A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Metamotivational Beliefs About Regulatory Focus Task-Motivation Fit

“…Beyond regulatory focus, future cross-cultural research should examine people’s beliefs regarding other motivational states. For example, recent research demonstrated that people in the United States and Japan recognize how to create construal-level task-motivation fit (Nguyen et al, 2020). Recent research also found that American and Japanese participants similarly did not recognize that extrinsic incentives can undermine their intrinsic motivation for a task (Murayama et al, 2016), thereby providing insight into people’s misbeliefs.…”

“…Specifically, Westerners may exhibit a promotion bias, whereas Easterners may have a prevention bias—consistent with cross-cultural research showing that Easterners and Westerners are particularly motivated by the culturally dominant regulatory focus (Lockwood et al, 2005; Uskul et al, 2009; see also Elliot et al, 2001). It is also possible, however, that metamotivational knowledge may operate similarly across cultures (Nguyen et al, 2020), even if those cultures differ in their predominant regulatory focus. Thus, one aim of this work is to examine the role that culture may (or may not) play in shaping a promotion or prevention bias in each culture.…”

“…We used similar exclusion criteria as in recent metamotivation research (Nguyen et al, 2020). We excluded participants who reported not paying attention (i.e., reported being “very” or “extremely” distracted, or taking the study “not at all” or “a little” seriously) and those who were not fluent in the language of the study materials.…”

“…Much of the extant metamotivational literature is based on Western samples (cf. Murayama et al, 2016; Nguyen et al, 2020). Whether metamotivational processes are similar across cultures is largely unknown.…”