Cultural Differences in Self-Evaluation

2001/07/01 by Steven J. Heine, Shinobu Kitayama, Darrin R. Lehman · 209 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · Medicine · #Cultural Differences and Values #Social and Intergroup Psychology #International Student and Expatriate Challenges #Creativity #Psychology #Task (project management) #Contrast (vision) #Weakness #Social psychology #Developmental psychology #Clinical psychology #Medicine #Computer science #Economics #Management #Artificial intelligence

paper · doi:10.1177/0022022101032004004

published in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 32(4), 434-443 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2001/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The authors investigated compensatory self-enhancement in Japanese and Canadian university students. Research has revealed that when North Americans publicly discover a weakness in one self domain, they typically bolster their self-assessments in another unrelated domain. This effect is less commonly found in private settings. Following a private failure experience on a creativity task, Canadians discounted the negative feedback, although they did not exhibit a compensatory self-enhancing response. In contrast, Japanese were highly responsive to the failure feedback and showed evidence of reverse compensatory self-enhancement. This study provides further evidence that self-evaluation maintenance strategies are elusive among Japanese samples.

Citations

• The definition of self: Private and public self-evaluation management strategies.
• Some effects of task relevance and friendship on helping: You don't always help the one you like
• Individual and collective processes in the construction of the self: Self-enhancement in the United States and self-criticism in Japan.
• Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory
• The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history.
• Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?
• Compensatory self-inflation: A response to the threat to self-regard of public failure.
• The associative basis of the creative process.
• Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
• Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies.
• Cultural variation in unrealistic optimism: Does the West feel more vulnerable than the East?
• Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis.
• Beyond Self-Presentation: Evidence for Self-Criticism among Japanese
• Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.

Cited by

• On Pancultural Self-Enhancement
• Culture [wikipedia]
• Self-enhancement [wikipedia]