Cultural variation in unrealistic optimism: Does the West feel more vulnerable than the East?

1995/04/01 by Steven J. Heine, Darrin R. Lehman · 13 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cultural Differences and Values #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Optimism, Hope, and Well-being #Psychology #Optimism #Variation (astronomy) #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.68.4.595

openalex publication_date 1995/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01

Abstract

Levels of unrealistic optimism were compared for Canadians (a culture typical of an independent construal of self) and Japanese (a culture typical of an interdependent construal of self). Across 2 studies, Canadians showed significantly more unrealistic optimism than Japanese, and Canadians' optimism bias was more strongly related to perceived threat. Study 2 revealed that Japanese were even less unrealistically optimistic for events that were particularly threatening to interdependent selves. The authors suggest that self-enhancing biases (such as unrealistic optimism) are, for the most part, absent from the motivational repertoire of the Japanese because the consequent attention to the individual that self-enhancement engenders is not valued in interdependent cultures

Citations

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Cited by

• Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?
• Individual and collective processes in the construction of the self: Self-enhancement in the United States and self-criticism in Japan.
• Pancultural self-enhancement reloaded: A meta-analytic reply to Heine (2005).
• Where Is the Evidence for Pancultural Self-Enhancement? A Reply to Sedikides, Gaertner, and Toguchi (2003).
• Inclusion of theory‐relevant moderators yield the same conclusions as Sedikides, Gaertner, and Vevea (2005): A meta‐analytical reply to Heine, Kitayama, and Hamamura (2007)
• Inclusion of additional studies yields different conclusions: Comment on Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea (2005), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• Which studies test whether self‐enhancement is pancultural? Reply to Sedikides, Gaertner, and Vevea, 2007
• Beyond Self-Presentation: Evidence for Self-Criticism among Japanese
• Cultural Differences in Self-Evaluation
• Self-Enhancement: Is it Restricted to Individualistic Cultures?
• On Pancultural Self-Enhancement
• Self-Enhancing Illusions among Chinese Schoolchildren
• Self-enhancement [wikipedia]