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.Other research provides striking evidence of self-critical tendenciesamong Japanese.For example, Japanese are more likely to attend to and re-call negative than positive information, whereas Americans demonstratethe opposite tendency (Meijer et al., 1999).Canadians tend to be more eas-ily convinced of their successes than their failures, whereas Japanese arequicker to conclude that they have failed than succeeded (Heine, Takata, &Lehman, 2000).Moreover, this vigilance for information indicating weak-nesses appears to serve an important function for Japanese: It highlightswhere they need to direct efforts for self-improvement.A series of cross-cultural laboratory studies on intrinsic motivation revealed that Japanesepersisted longer when they discovered a shortcoming in their performance,whereas North Americans persisted longer when they discovered astrength (Heine et al., 2001).Self-criticism in Japan thus appears to serve asimilar purpose to self-enhancement in North America: it enables people toperform at their best.Much convergent evidence thus indicates that tendencies to possess, en-hance, and maintain positive self-views are less evident among Japanesethan among North Americans.These differences are also evident for thoseaspects of their selves that Japanese view as most important to them(Heine et al., 2001; Heine & Lehman, 1999; Heine & Renshaw, 2002; but seeIto, 1999, for evidence of the opposite pattern among Japanese), and in stud-ies conducted with hidden or behavioral measures (see Heine et al., 1999,for a review), and thus cannot be interpreted as solely due to cultural differ-ences in self-presentation norms.Motivations to maintain a positive self-view, as it is typically operationalized in the literature, are less evidentamong Japanese compared with North Americans (although Japanesesurely have other important self-relevant motivations, such as a desire tomaintain face; Heine et al., 1999).To the extent that habitual positive evaluations of the self (i.e., self-esteem) are fostered by cultural experiences that emphasize the independ-ence and autonomy of the individual, time spent in a Western cultural envi-ronment should be associated with exposure to a dialogue that stresses theTLFeBOOK13.ACCULTURATION OF THE SELF-CONCEPT 317value of possessing positive self-views.That is, with exposure to the cul-tural values, scripts, practices, customs, and institutions that are hypothe-sized to encourage self-enhancement (see Heine et al., 1999, for a review) itwould seem that individuals would respond to these cultural meanings andbecome sensitive to detecting positive features within themselves.In short,exposure to Western culture should be associated with positive self-views.The process of acculturation provides us with a unique window throughwhich to investigate such effects of culture.When an individual moves to anew culture, he or she will likely undergo some kind of  psychological ac-culturation (Graves, 1967), learning how to interact within his or her newcultural environment.With increasing time spent in the host culture, it islikely that the host culture s influence on the individual s self-concept andways of thinking will also increase.Experiences in a new cultural environ-ment may thus lead individuals to adopt ways of viewing themselves thatare normative within the host cultural environment.One way of investigat-ing the relation between self-esteem and Western cultural values is to ana-lyze acculturating individuals self-esteem scores at various points in the ac-culturation process.STUDY 1Method and ResultsWe sought to investigate whether there are differences in self-esteem amongindividuals who differ in their exposure to Western culture.We includedthe Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) in a large number ofquestionnaire studies that were conducted with students from universitiesin Vancouver, Canada, and in a variety of cities in Japan.We created a largefile that included participants self-esteem responses and some demo-graphic variables (a total of over 5,000 participants).The participants camefrom the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University in Can-ada, and from Aichi Gakuin, Doshisha University, Kansai Gaikokugo Univer-sity, Kyoto University, Nagasaki University, Nara University, RitsumeikanUniversity, and Toyama University in Japan.Japanese participants com-pleted the scale in Japanese and Canadian participants completed the scalein English.The original Rosenberg Scale was translated into Japanese, back-translated into English, and any discrepancies between the two versionswere discussed among three translators.As a large proportion of university students in the two Canadian univer-sities are of Asian descent, from a variety of different countries with themost common ethnic heritage being Chinese (self-criticism is also evidentamong Chinese; e.g., Yik, Bond, & Paulhus, 1998), and as a significant num-TLFeBOOK318 HEINE AND LEHMANber of the Japanese students had spent time in a Western country, we wereable to analyze the data with respect to how much time participants hadbeen exposed to Western culture.2 A continuum of increasing exposure toWestern culture was created by classifying participants into the followinggroups:1.Japanese who had never been outside of Japan (n = 1657).2.Japanese who had spent some time in a Western country (n = 577).3.Recent Asian immigrants to Canada (n = 244).4.Long-term Asian immigrants to Canada (n = 289).5.Second-generation Asian Canadians (n = 431).6 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]