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

Abstract

This paper reports on a study relevant to the psychology literature on pan-cultural self-enhancement; namely, what are some strategies by which people from nonwestern cultures raise their self-worth? I conducted an experiment to test hypotheses regarding culturally acceptable means of communicating positive feedback and its effect on changes in self-esteem. Japanese were expected to report elevated feelings of self-worth after receiving positive feedback from a friend, whereas Americans were expected to report higher feelings of self-worth after announcing their own positive feedback (given by an experimenter in front of a friend). One hundred and fifty-seven pairs of friends participated in an experiment in which one friend in each pair was the target of positive feedback from a simulated creativity test (delivered by self or friend). Analyses revealed that culture and source of feedback affected the global self-esteem of the test takers and appearance self-esteem of both the test taker and the friend. Relative to each culture, US Americans' self-esteem increased after self-delivered feedback, whereas the self-esteem of Japanese increased after feedback announced by a friend. The results highlight appropriate feedback situations leading to positive self-evaluation for Japanese and Americans. Implications for intercultural education are discussed.

Multiple Paths to Belonging That We Should Study Together

“…4 These strategies include striving for accomplishment; making it known that one is associated with successful, popular, or attractive other people or institutions to bask in their reflected glory; and avoiding associations with embarrassing others or institutions to avoid negative reflection (Cialdini et al, 1976). People also may gain approbation by joining or aiming to be elected to prestigious groups (Wright & Forsyth, 1997), advertising their accomplishments (Dalsky, 2011, but only for the Americans in the sample), acquiring materialistic goods (Jiang, Zhang, Ke, Hawk, & Qiu, 2015), or outperforming others (Festinger, 1954; Ratliff & Oishi, 2013; Wills, 1981). There are many such strategies.…”