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Journal ArticleDOI

Explaining self-esteem differences between Chinese and North Americans: Dialectical self (vs. self-consistency) or lack of positive self-regard

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TLDR
This article found that the difference in self-esteem between East Asians and North Americans was driven primarily by Chinese participants' greater tendency to agree with negatively worded selfesteem items and that because of the motivation to maintain consistent responses, North Americans' response pattern varied depending on whether the first item in the selfesteem measur...
Abstract
Past studies showed that compared to North Americans, East Asians have lower self-esteem and their self-esteem scores do not predict self-esteem-related motivations and self-perceptions. These findings have been interpreted in terms of a lack of the need for positive self-regard in East Asian contexts. We posit that the East – West difference in self-esteem may arise from the popularity of the dialectical self (the idea that one can have both a positive and negative self) in East Asia and of the internally consistent self (the notion that having a positive self implies not having a negative one, and vice versa) in North America. Consistent with this idea, we found that the Chinese American difference in self-esteem level was driven primarily by Chinese participants' greater tendency to agree with negatively worded self-esteem items. Furthermore, because of the motivation to maintain consistent responses, North Americans' response pattern varied depending on whether the first item in the self-esteem measur...

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Cultural Differences in Expectations of Change and Tolerance for Contradiction: A Decade of Empirical Research

TL;DR: The authors show how dialectical thinkers show greater expectation of change in tasks related to explanation and prediction and greater tolerance of contradiction in tasks involving the reconciliation of contradictory information in the domains of the self, emotional experience, psychological well-being, attitudes and evaluations, social categorization and perception, and judgment and decision making.
Journal ArticleDOI

The jury and abjury of my peers: the self in face and dignity cultures.

TL;DR: Across 3 experiments, dignity culture participants showed a studied indifference to the judgments of their peers, ignoring peers' assessments--whether those assessments were public or private, were positive or negative, or were made by qualified peers or unqualified peers.
Journal ArticleDOI

When Academic Achievement Is an Obligation: Perspectives From Social-Oriented Achievement Motivation

TL;DR: This paper found that Asian students on average not only performed better than other ethnic groups as documented in multinational achievement tests, but also showed more negative emotions and test anxiety, which was rooted in the endorsement of social-oriented achievement motivation (SOAM) among Asian students.
Book ChapterDOI

On the panculturality of self-enhancement and self-protection motivation: the case for the universality of self-esteem

TL;DR: This article proposed the extended self-enhancing tactician model to account for cross-cultural invariance (equivalence of self-motive strength and self-esteem desire across cultures) and cross-culture variability (differential manifestations of selfmotives and selfesteem across cultures).
Journal ArticleDOI

What constitutes a good life? Cultural differences in the role of positive and negative affect in subjective well-being.

TL;DR: Support is found for the hypothesis that differences in subjective well-being between Europeans and European Americans may be due to the psychological meanings Eastern and Western cultures attach to positive and negative affect.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Self-esteem and responses to success and failure: Subsequent performance and intrinsic motivation

TL;DR: In this article, a model was proposed in which the goal of people with high self-esteem is to cultivate personal strengths in order to excel, whereas the goal for people with low self- esteem is to remedy personal deficiencies to become adequate.
BookDOI

Social Psychology of Culture

TL;DR: This book discusses culture in a historical context, the psychology of culture, and the role of language in the development of modern culture.
Journal ArticleDOI

Why is Self-Enhancement Low in Certain Collectivist Cultures?: An Investigation of Two Competing Explanations

TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare two alternative explanations for low self-enhancement that characterizes collectivist cultures: (a) lack of a selfenhancements motive arising from the perceived centrality of others, and (b) cultural restrictions imposed on the self that are manifested by modesty requirements.
Journal ArticleDOI

On knowing when to quit: Task failure, self‐esteem, advice, and nonproductive persistence

TL;DR: This paper found that high self-esteem subjects who received explicit advice against nonproductive persistence on a puzzle-solving task still tended to persist longer on unsolvable puzzles than did low selfesteem subjects.
Journal ArticleDOI

Self-Enhancement: Is it Restricted to Individualistic Cultures?

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated how self-enhancement relates to interdependent and independent self-construals typical of collectivist and individualist cultures, respectively, and found no cultural difference in selfenhancements of communal traits.
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