Understanding Western-East Asian Differences and Similarities in Self-Enhancement

Abstract

I present a roughly historical overview of the literature bearing on the universality of the self‐enhancement motive, which I define as the need to cultivate and maintain a positive self‐view. There is considerable evidence indicating that people from prototypically Western cultures demonstrate a strong need to self‐enhance, which manifests itself in a number of tendencies involving attending to and elaborating upon positive self‐relevant information at the expense of negative information. Recently, a lively debate about the universality of the self‐enhancement motive emerged, with some researchers arguing that the motive itself is culture‐specific and others contending that the motive is universal but that culture places important constraints on how it is expressed. I provide a review and synthesis of the existing evidence and conclude by discussing research on dialectical self‐esteem, which offers another perspective on how culture shapes the expression of self‐evaluative processes.

Language and the bicultural dialectical self.

“…Although there is debate about this topic, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that the self-evaluations of East Asians and East Asian Americans are self-critical relative to those of European Americans (see Heine & Hamamura, 2007, for a review). An implication of the current research is that although the motive to possess a positive self-view is universal, the expression of self-enhancement among European Americans connotes elaborating on positive self-relevant information and denying negative self-relevant information, whereas in East Asian cultures positive self-conceptions can coexist with negative ones (see Boucher, 2010, for an extended discussion of this idea). This is a fruitful direction for future research.…”

Economic Inequality Is Linked to Biased Self-Perception

“…The prevailing explanation of cross-cultural variability in levels of self-enhancement invokes the cultural dimensions of individualism and collectivism (Boucher, 2010; Chiu, Wan, Cheng, Kim, & Yang, 2010; Triandis, 1995) and the associated concepts of independence and interdependence (Heine et al, 1999; Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). Theorists argue that Westerners are more likely to be individualists who seek personal success and uniqueness, and thus self-enhance more than do Easterners, who are more likely to be collectivists seeking interpersonal harmony and belonging (Boucher, 2010; Heine & Hamamura, 2007). We propose an alternative explanation that favors socioeconomic differences over cultural dimensions.…”

Making sense of positive self‐evaluations in China: The role of sociocultural change

“…For instance, recent research documented a steady increase in need for uniqueness in China, but the same trend was largely non‐existent in Japan during the same period (Zou, Cai, & Liu, ). Research on this front will have implications for whether the lack of self‐enhancement in contemporary East Asia is more heterogeneous than previously thought (Boucher, ).…”

“…The preponderance of evidence reviewed thus far points to the failure of various self‐enhancement effects demonstrated in Western populations to be generalized in East Asia (Heine & Hamamura, ). However, recent research has revealed some exceptions (for recent reviews, see Boucher, and Chiu, Wan, Cheng, Kim, & Yang, ). In particular, there have been several lines of evidence indicating the relative prevalence of self‐enhancement among the Chinese samples, especially more recent ones (Brown & Cai, ; Cai, Kwan, & Sedikides, ; Cai, Wu, & Brown, ; Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, ; O'Mara, Gaertner, Sedikides, Zhou, & Liu, ).…”