Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?

Abstract

It is assumed that people seek positive self-regard; that is, they are motivated to possess, enhance, and maintain positive self-views. The cross-cultural generalizability of such motivations was addressed by examining Japanese culture. Anthropological, sociological, and psychological analyses revealed that many elements of Japanese culture are incongruent with such motivations. Moreover, the empirical literature provides scant evidence for a need for positive self-regard among Japanese and indicates that a self-critical focus is more characteristic of Japanese. It is argued that the need for self-regard must be culturally variant because the constructions of self and regard themselves differ across cultures. The need for positive self-regard, as it is currently conceptualized, is not a universal, but rather is rooted in significant aspects of North American culture. Conventional interpretations of positive self-regard are too narrow to encompass the Japanese experience.

Simultaneous Administration of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale in 53 Nations: Exploring the Universal and Culture-Specific Features of Global Self-Esteem.

“…Thus, in cultures in which people differ considerably from one another in their self-esteem (i.e., high nation-level standard deviations), there is a tendency for individ- uals to respond less similarly to all items (i.e., high interitem variance within each person). This Metatraitedness finding also suggests that people from Asian and African countries may have lower self-esteem clarity (Heine et al, 1999). Perhaps because people from these regions are not used to thinking about their self-esteem or do not have a clear sense of what self-esteem means, they are less likely to confidently endorse endpoints on the RSES.…”

“…Even more compelling, overall positive self-evaluations tend to increase among Japanese people as their exposure to North American culture increases (Heine et al, 1999). Measures of self-esteem have yielded comparable differences between the individualistic United States and collectivist Hong Kong (Kwan, Bond, & Singelis, 1997) and between the individualistic United Kingdom and collectivist Spain (Tafarodi & Walters, 1999).…”

Refining the vulnerability model of low self-esteem and depression: Disentangling the effects of genuine self-esteem and narcissism.

“…Examining the cross-cultural validity of the present findings is particularly important, because there is an ongoing debate about whether members of collectivistic cultures show the same need for self-esteem and the same level of narcissism and self-enhancement bias as do members of individualistic cultures (Cai, Wu, & Brown, 2009;Heine, 2005;Heine & Hamamura, 2007;Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999;Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003;Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea, 2005). Therefore, future research should test whether genuine self-esteem and pure narcissism show different relations with depression in collectivistic versus individualistic cultural contexts.…”

Pancultural self-enhancement reloaded: A meta-analytic reply to Heine (2005).

“…In an influential article, Heine, Lehman, Markus, and Kitayama (1999) drew a provocative conclusion: "The empirical literature provides scant evidence for a need for positive self-regard among Japanese and indicates that a self-critical focus is more characteristic of Japanese," "the need for self-regard must be culturally variant," and "the need for self-regard . .…”