Empathy,culture and self‐humanising: Empathising reduces the attribution of greater humanness to the self more in Japan than Australia

People tend to ascribe greater humanness to themselves than to others. Previous research has indicated that this “self‐humanising” bias is independent of self‐enhancement and robust across cultures. The present study examined the possible role of empathy in reducing this bias in Japan (N = 80) and Australia (N = 80). Results showed that unlike Australians, Japanese participants who recalled personal experiences of empathising with others were less likely to self‐humanise than those in a neutral condition. The effect of the empathy manipulation was not observed in Australia. The findings suggest that empathy may reduce self‐focus and enable perceivers to appreciate the full humanness of others, but this effect may be culturally contingent.     

Humiliated fury is not universal: the co-occurrence of anger and shame in the United States and Japan

It has been widely believed that individuals transform high-intensity shame into anger because shame is unbearably painful. This phenomenon was first coined “humiliated fury,” and it has since received empirical support. The current research tests the novel hypothesis that shame-related anger is not universal, yet hinges on the cultural meanings of anger and shame. Two studies compared the occurrence of shame-related anger in North American cultural contexts (where shame is devalued and anger is valued) to its occurrence in Japanese contexts (where shame is valued and anger is devalued). In a daily-diary study, participants rated anger and shame feelings during shame situations that occurred over one week. In a vignette study, participants rated anger and shame in response to standardised shame vignettes that were generated in previous research by either U.S. or Japanese respondents. Across the two studies, and in line with previous research on humiliated fury, shame predicted anger for U.S. participants. Yet, neither in the daily diary study nor for the Japanese-origin vignettes, did we find shame-related anger in Japanese participants. Only when presented with U.S.-origin vignettes, did Japanese respondents in the vignette study report shame-related anger. The findings suggest that shame-related anger is a culture-specific phenomenon.     

Residential mobility increases motivation to expand social network: But why?

We conducted two studies to explore psychological consequences of a mobile lifestyle. In Study 1, we found that participants who were randomly assigned to think about a mobile lifestyle used more loneliness and sadness-related words and anticipated having fewer friends in the future than those who thought about a stable lifestyle (or a typical day as a control). In Study 2, we replicated this finding with a non-college sample. In addition, we found that those in the mobility condition reported being more motivated to expand their social network. Finally, the effect of mobility on the motivation to expand social networks was mediated by anticipated loneliness and sadness.     

Experimentally Detecting How Cultural Differences on Social Anxiety Measures Misrepresent Cultural Differences in Emotional Well-being

Previous research, statistically accounting for self-construal factors and thereby eliminating widely reported culture main effects in social anxiety scores between East Asians and European-Americans (Norasakkunkit and Kalick 2002 Culture, ethnicity, and emotional distress measures: The role of self-construal and self-enhancement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33(1), 56–70.) suggested that social anxiety measures penalize individuals for being low on independent self-construal; therefore, cultural differences in emotional distress according to social anxiety measures may possibly misrepresent cultural differences in emotional well-being. In the current experimental study, 127 Japanese and 126 American participants were either primed or not primed to access an independent mode of thought prior to filling out two commonly used measures of social anxiety and a measure of emotional well-being. Independent priming caused social anxiety scores to decrease. Yet, independent priming did not influence levels of self-reported emotional well-being. Furthermore, although the Japanese respondents were shown to be more distressed according to both of the standardized social anxiety measures, this finding was actually reversed with respect to self-reported emotional well-being. The evidence thus points to high scores on measurements of social anxiety being directly and causally linked to low levels of independence, while no link was found between independence and emotional well-being.

Perfectionism in depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders

High levels of perfectionism have been observed in major depression, anxiety disorders and eating disorders. Though few studies have compared levels of perfectionism across these disorders, there is reason to believe that different dimensions of perfectionism may be involved in eating disorders than in depression or anxiety [Bardone-Cone, A. M. et al. (2007). Perfectionism and eating disorders: Current status and future directions. Clinical Psychology Review, 27, 84-405]. The present study compared patients with major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and eating disorders on dimensions of perfectionism. Concern over Mistakes was elevated in each of the patient groups while Pure Personal Standards was only elevated in the eating disorder sample. Doubts about Actions was elevated in both patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders, but not in depressed patients. Analyses of covariance indicated that Concern over Mistakes accounted for most of the variance in the relationship of perfectionism to these forms of psychopathology.     

Caught Between Culture,Society, and Globalization: Youth Marginalization in Post‐industrial Japan

In this article, we review the controversies regarding how representative Japanese psychological patterns are of an interdependent orientation and discuss understanding these controversies in the context of seeing Japanese youth as being marginalized in their own society. We review specific studies on shifting values and motivational patterns at the individual level and incorporate a sociological perspective to understand the causes of these patterns at the social‐structural level. We argue that traditional cultural practices are maintained to protect the senior elites of Japan at a cost of increasing the rift between culture, society, and post‐industrial trends. The unsustainability of this rift then ends up asymmetrically marginalizing Japanese youth who bear the brunt of the cost of institutional resistance to globalization pressures. Therefore, the “demotivation” and psychological distancing from interdependent norms among marginalized Japanese youth are not the causes of marginalization, but rather, are an outcome of it. Thus, we argue that psychology of globalization and the psychology of marginalization can go hand‐in‐hand, especially for societies with dominant institutions that are interdependent, relatively inflexible, seniority‐based, and are entering a post‐industrial economy due to globalization demands.     

Cultural constructions of happiness: theory and emprical evidence

In a review of recent cross-cultural evidence on happiness and well-being, the authors identified substantial cultural variations in (1) cultural meanings of happiness, (2) motivations underlying happiness, and (3) predictors of happiness. Specifically, in North American cultural contexts, happiness tends to be defined in terms of personal achievement. Individuals engaging in these cultures are motivated to maximize the experience of positive affect. Moreover, happiness is best predicted by self-esteem. In contrast, in East Asian cultural contexts, happiness tends to be defined in terms of interpersonal connectedness. Individuals engaging in these cultures are motivated to maintain a balance between positive and negative affects. Moreover, happiness is best predicted by perceived embeddedness of the self in a social relationship. Directions for future research are discussed.