On Pancultural Self-Enhancement
2008/05/12 by Lowell Gaertner, Constantine Sedikides, Kirk Chang · 2 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · Neuroscience · #Cultural Differences and Values #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Collectivism #Self-enhancement #Psychology #Social psychology #Individualism #Assertion #Life satisfaction #Phenomenon
paper · doi:10.1177/0022022108318431
openalex publication_date 2008/05/12 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Abstract
Taiwanese participants made better-than-average judgments on collectivistic and individualistic traits, evaluated the personal importance of those traits, and completed measures of psychological adjustment (depression, perceived stress, subjective well-being, and satisfaction with life). Replicating findings from other East Asian samples, participants self-enhanced (i.e., regarded the self as superior to peers) more on collectivistic than individualistic attributes and assigned higher personal importance to the former than the latter. Moreover, better adjusted participants manifested a stronger tendency to self-enhance on personally important attributes. These data are consistent with the view that self-enhancement is a universal human motive that is expressed tactically and at odds with the assertion that self-enhancement is a uniquely Western phenomenon.
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