An Indirect Self-Enhancement in Relationship among Japanese

Abstract

Past research in cross-cultural psychology has emphasized a contrast between Western self-serving tendency and East Asian self-effacing tendency in attributions. The present author, however, poses a question to this simple dichotomy and presents some empirical evidence for indirect self-enhancement among Japanese. Participants were asked to recall their positive and negative life events and to make attributions. Results showed that Japanese tended to make self-effacing attributions for their success and failure. At the same time, however, they expected their parents, siblings, and close friends to make internal attributions for their success more than for their failure. In addition, they believed that these people understand them to a large extent. Japanese would not enhance or protect their self-esteem explicitly, but that they would do so indirectly through others' eyes.

Asian social psychology: Looking in and looking out

“…Early comparative research gave little support to the presence of a self-serving bias in Asian samples (e.g. As can be observed in the 2003 special issue of the Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, the hypotheses have examined the importance of modesty versus the centrality of others to account for these differences (Kurman, 2003), variations in bias as a function of public and private conditions (Kudo & Numazaki, 2003) and direct and indirect means of expression (Muramoto, 2003). These findings were complemented by discussions that contrasted self-enhancement biases found in Western societies and self-effacement (or modesty) biases in East Asian cultures (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).…”

Effects of Culture and Age on the Perceived Exchange of Social Support Resources

“…This is in sharp contrast to the attributions found in individualistic cultures where there is an emphasis on executing personal control and standing out from the group, and where success is more likely to be attributed to inner dispositions and failures to external factors (cf. Muramoto, 2003;Weisz et al, 1984). Thus, as noted by Bond, Leung, and Wan (1982), social perceptions in collectivist cultures often suggest that "other factors external to the actor will operate to determine his or her outcomes" (p. 197).…”

Effects of Communicating Success With Friends on Self-Esteem in Japan and the United States

“…"), while expecting others to make internal attributions for their successes (e.g., "My friend would say 'you must have studied hard' or 'you are a smart person.'") (Muramoto, 2003;Muramoto & Yamaguchi, 1997). However, no cross-cultural experiments have been designed to directly test for the effects of communicating success with friends on selfesteem change in relationships.…”

“…The present study builds on previous work that has considered self-evaluation in a relational context (Dalsky, Gohm, Noguchi, & Shiomura, 2008;Kitayama & Uchida, 2003;Kobayashi & Greenwald, 2003;Muramoto, 2003;Muramoto & Yamaguchi, 1997). It involves a cross-cultural experiment in which two friends were not engaged in competition to test for cultural differences in the effects of positive feedback on selfesteem.…”

“…Data from cross-cultural studies have also supported this idea. For example, in one series of studies, Japanese were found to self-enhance on culturally important traits (Brown & Kobayashi, 2002;2003) and these findings were replicated and extended in another series of studies where Japanese were found to selfenhance on collectivistic traits, but not on individualistic traits (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003). For a summary, including meta-analyses, of evidence for both sides of the debate on universal self-enhancement see Heine (2005), and Heine, Kitayama, & Hamamura (2007) and Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea (2005).…”