Cultural Differences in Self-Enhancing Tendencies …...cultural differences of self-enhancement...

Cross-cultural communication researchers have traditionally employed cultural-level

explanations (e.g., individualism-collectivism) for observed similarities and differences in

communication-related behavior. Although these cultural-level explanations have helped

clarify meaningful dimensions of individual-level variability in cross-cultural work so

that differences can be interpreted in terms of functional psychological characteristics,

this approach has recently been criticized because cultural-level constructs such as

individualism vs. collectivism (Hofstede, 1980, 1991 ; Triandis, 1995) and high-context vs.

low-context (Hall, 1976) are too readily utilized as a catchall construct to explicate

numerous cross-cultural differences of behavior. Culture is a fuzzy concept and difficult

to define and operationalize (Kim, 2002). Therefore, it is an ineffective independent

variable unless its associations with behavior are specified via intervening variables. It is

often uncertain what in culture induces behavior without unambiguous mediating

variables (Kagitcibasi, 1994).

In this connection, recent cross-cultural research efforts have been exerted on cultural

differences of self-enhancing biases, showing that, whereas self-enhancing biases are

frequently observed in Western cultures, they are less common in Eastern cultures

(Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman, 2001 ; Heine, Kitayama, Lehman et al., 2001 ; Heine,

Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999 ; Kitayama, Takagi, & Matsumoto, 1995 ;

Kobayashi & Brown, 2003). This challenges the commonly-held belief that self-

enhancement needs are universal (Brown & Kobayashi, 2003).

Although self-enhancing biases may be considered a strong candidate for such

研究ノート

Cultural Differences in Self-EnhancingTendencies and Their Implications

for Interpersonal Accounts

〔要旨〕 Taylor＆Brown（１９８８）は，自己高揚傾向（自尊感情を高く維持する傾

向）を（１）非現実的なまでに自己を肯定的に捉えること，（２）統制に関する幻想，

（３）非現実的な楽観主義に分類し，これらが精神的健康の維持に必要だと論じたが，

西洋では当然視されているこの自己高揚傾向が東洋では見られないという報告は少なく

ない。本稿では，自尊感情の文化相対論を支持する文献をレビューし，自己高揚傾向の

文化差が弁明行動に影響を及ぼす可能性があることを検証可能な仮説として整理し，今

後の実証研究の橋渡しとすることにした。

〔キーワード〕 self-enhancement, self-serving attributional bias, illusion of control,

unrealistic optimism, interpersonal accounts

島田拓司

87

mediating variables, hardly any empirical studies have focused direct attention on the

cultural differences of self-enhancement motives and their implications of communication.

Little is known about how self-enhancing biases affect communication behavior across

cultures. Therefore, this paper attempts to shed light on this theoretical link by

reviewing mounting empirical evidence of cultural differences of self-enhancing biases

and their influences on one type of verbal communication, namely, interpersonal

accounts.

Accounts are verbal explanations offered to explicate the inappropriate or awkward

behavior. The actor offers accounts to regain his or her social identity, steers clear of

conflicts or maintains the social order by verbally filling the gap between action and

expectation. For example, a student may excuses to his or her professor for a late term

paper, a husband may apologize to his wife for forgetting her birthday, a frustrated

driver may attempt to justify speeding in order to take his sick boy to the hospital, or a

schoolboy may deny his friend’s accusation of lying. Accounts are usually not requested

as long as the actor engages in everyday, taken-for-granted behavior (Scott & Lyman,

1968). When it deviates from the range of normality, however, the actor may be obliged

to account for his or her behavior.

Given that interpersonal accounts may be viewed as the process of “reality

negotiation” (Snyder & Higgins, 1988), cultural differences in self-enhancing biases

should present dissimilar realities across cultures that are distorted by self-enhancing

biases. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to present testable propositions regarding

cultural differences of self-enhancement and their impact on interpersonal accounts.

Culture and Self-Enhancing Biases

Self-enhancing biases can be defined as people’s tendencies to distort their perceptions

of the world in a self-enhancing manner (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Although a need for

positive self-regard (i.e., a self-enhancement bias) has long been considered a

fundamental truth of human nature that transcends cultural boundaries, several

researchers have recently come to cast doubt on the universality of these biases (Heine,

2003 ; Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman, 2001 ; Heine, Kitayama, Lehman et al., 2001 ;

Heine & Lehman, 1995, 1997 ; Heine et al., 1999 ; Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, &

Norasakkunkit, 1997 ; Kitayama et al., 1995). These biases are generally thought to

affect various self-relevant information-processing, offering people an unrealistically

positive self-evaluation (Brown & Kobayashi, 2003). Taylor and Brown (1988) divided

these biases into three distinctive spheres : unrealistically positive view of the self , which

includes the self-serving attributional bias (a tendency to take credit for success but deny

responsibility for failure) and the self-other bias (a tendency for people to believe they are

better than most other people), exaggerated perceptions of personal control (a tendency to

exaggerate one’s ability to bring about desired outcomes), and unrealistic optimism (a

tendency for people to believe that positive events are more likely to occur and negative

incidents are less likely to take place to them than to similar others). Although self-

88 天理大学学報第６２巻第２号

enhancing biases are quite prevalent in Western, individualistic cultures, they are not so

common in Eastern, collectivistic cultures.

1. Unrealistically Positive View of the Self

Despite a traditional concept that the mentally healthy individual holds a view of the

self that comprises an awareness and acceptance of both positive and negative

components of self, there is ample evidence to indicate that, far from being balanced

between the positive and the negative, most individuals possess the perception of self

that is heavily skewed toward the positive end of the scale (Taylor & Brown, 1988).

There are roughly two types of evidence that show the inclination of individuals’ having

unrealistically positive view of self : the self-other bias and the self-serving attributional bias.

The self-other bias is a widespread tendency to see the self as better than others.

Individuals judge positive personality traits to be more illustrative of themselves than of

the average person but see negative personality features as less descriptive of themselves

than of the average person. Because most people cannot possibly be better than the

average person, these heavily distorted positive views of the self clearly indicate their

unrealistic and illusory quality. Instead of directing their attention to both the positive

and negative aspects of self, individuals tend to be more mindful of their strengths and

less aware of their weaknesses. Therefore, most individuals not only see themselves as

better than the average person, but they also see themselves as better than others see

them (Taylor & Brown, 1988).

Cross-cultural researchers have recently challenged the universality of this overly

positive view of self. Markus and Kitayama (1991) reported that the Japanese and the

Americans students revealed striking differences in their evaluation of their own

uniqueness : the Americans displayed significantly more false uniqueness (i.e., the

tendency to overemphasize the uniqueness of one’s own positive attributes) than the

Japanese. Whereas American students thought that no more than 30% of people would

be better than themselves on such traits and abilities as memory, athletic abilities,

independence, and sympathy, the Japanese students showed virtually no evidence of this

false uniqueness. In general, the Japanese students expected that about half of students

would be better than they were on those favorable traits and abilities, which, of course,

was not surprising, provided that a representative sample of college students were

judging themselves in a nonbiased manner.

In Heine and Lehman’s (1999) study, Japanese and Canadian participants’ ratings of

the average students in terms of 20 important personality traits were subtracted from

their self-assessments to construct the measures of their self-enhancing biases. European

Canadians exhibited significantly more self-enhancing bias (i.e., their self-ratings were

significantly more positive than their ratings of the average students) than Asian

Canadians and Japanese. In addition, this study revealed that Japanese felt greater

actual-ideal self-discrepancies than Canadians. Heine and Lehman argue that, while

smaller actual-ideal discrepancies or unrealistically positive views of self serve to endorse

Cultural Differences in Self-Enhancing Tendencies and

Their Implications for Interpersonal Accounts

89

North Americans’ cultural ideal of independence (i.e., being complete and autonomous

individual who is capable of taking care of themselves), greater actual-ideal self-

discrepancies promote the Japanese to make efforts to improve themselves, which may be

necessary to ensure that they are invariably adjusting themselves to the needs of the

group.

Heine and Renshaw (2002) obtained a similar result, providing additional support for

cultural differences of the self-other bias. They asked participants to evaluate themselves

in terms of 30 personality traits and asked their four peers to evaluate the participants

regarding the same items. Self-enhancement measures, which were constructed by

comparing participants’ self-assessments with their peers’ average assessments, indicated

that 62% of the American participants viewed themselves more positively than their

peers (i.e., more self-enhancing), whereas 84% of the Japanese participants viewed

themselves less positively than their peers (i.e., more self-critical).

Previous research in self-enhancement clearly suggests the Japanese are more likely to

view themselves less positively than North Americans. This tendency also seems to be

reflected in their scores of self-esteem, which have consistently indicated that the

Japanese generally have more negative self-views than North Americans. Self-esteem,

often refers to the way people generally feel about themselves most of the time across

most situations, is related to self-evaluation such that people with high self-esteem tend

to think they have many more positive qualities than those with low self-esteem (Brown,

1998). In fact, the magnitude of the self-other bias is greater among high self-esteem

than low self-esteem people. Heine et al. (1999) reported that a meta-analysis of

Rosenberg’s (1965) global self-esteem scores of the Japanese who had never lived outside

of Japan showed a markedly different distribution than that of the European Canadians.

The self-evaluation for Japanese is usually moderate and is normally distributed,

comparable to naturally occurring phenomenon. However, a heavily negatively skewed

distribution was found in North American studies of self-esteem. The meta-analysis also

suggested that North American culture promotes the growth of positive self-view. More

than 4,000 Canadians and Japanese were categorized into seven groups in terms of their

exposure to North American cultures ranging from the least exposure, “Japanese who

had never been outside Japan,” to the most exposure, “European-descent Canadians.”

The result of this classification clearly showed the relation between the amount of

exposure to North American culture and self-esteem, such that global self-esteem scores

increase with the exposure to North American culture.

The self-serving attributional bias (a tendency to attribute success to dispositional or

internal factors and failure to situational or external causes) is another manifestation of

self-enhancing motives. Studies in the U.S. have consistently demonstrated that they

generally take credit for their successes, but deny responsibility for their failures (e.g.,

Miller & Ross, 1975 ; Zuckerman, 1979). For instance, Zuckerman (1979) reported that of

a total of 38 studies reviewed, 27 studies found such self-serving attributional biases.

Attribution of success to one’s own induces positive esteem-related emotions and a


confidence of high self-perceived ability, resulting in self-enhancement. External

attributions for failure generate less distressing emotions than internal ones and do not

cause doubts about one’s ability (i.e., self-protection). The preference for dispositional

attributions for success and situational attributions for failure could reflect self-serving

mechanisms (self-enhancement and self-protection).

Although self-serving attributional biases are commonly found in Western countries,

the universality of this tendency has been challenged (Chandler, Shama, Wolf, &

Planchard, 1981 ; Kashima & Triandis, 1986 ; Kitayama et al., 1995 ; Takata, 1987 ;

Yan & Gaier, 1994). Kitayama, Takagi, and Matsumoto (1995) reviewed 23 studies that

dealt with Japanese causal attributions for success and failure, concluding that there was

nearly no evidence of a self-serving tendency among Japanese participants. Instead, they

found some evidence suggesting a self-critical bias. In general, those studies showed that

the Japanese tend to attribute their successes to luck and ease of task, but their failures

to ability and effort. Kitayama et al. (1995) contend that with respect to abilities,

Americans typically give themselves higher ratings than they give to others. Thus, unlike

Japanese, Americans usually attribute their successes to ability and it is very unlikely

that they attribute their failures to ability.

The ability dimension seems to be the specific area in which Japanese are likely to

reveal self-effacing tendency. In fact, recent studies indicate that ability（１） is the single

most significant contributor to the cross-cultural attributional difference, i.e., Japanese

consistently devalue their own ability as an attributional factor of success, but they are

likely to attribute failure to their ability. Kashima and Triandis (1986), for example,

found that, in dealing with success and failure experiences, American students tend to

use an individual coping strategy (i.e., self-serving attributions) more than Japanese

students only on the ability-related dimensions. In this context, Kudo and Numazaki

(2003) remind us of the two dimensions that people wish to look desirable to others :

competence and likableness. Because people are likely to show a self-serving bias when

they wish to look competent and they would show a self-effecting bias when they wish to

look likeable, Kudo and Numazaki argue that cultural norms may exert influence on

which motive (self-serving or self-effacing) should be activated more frequently and

easily.（２）

Furthermore, self-serving biases may influence the perceptions of fairness in conflict

and negotiation. Gelfand et al. (2002) argue that self-serving biases in negotiation reflect

cultural ideals such that an individual is motivated to enhance one’s positive qualities to

“stand out” and outdo others in individualistic cultures and that an individual is expected

to attenuate self-serving biases in negotiation by focusing on one’s negative aspects to

“blend in” and maintain a interdependent relationship with others in collectivistic

cultures. In study one, participants from the U.S. and Japan were asked to generate fair

and unfair behaviors and indicate whether they engaged in such behaviors more

frequently than others (“I-fair” and “I-unfair”) or whether others did more than them

(“they-fair” and “they-unfair”). The result showed that U.S. participants generated more I



91

-fair items and they-unfair items, suggesting greater self-serving perceptions of fairness

as compared with Japanese participants. Study two examined how participants from the

two cultures would judge their own behavior and the other party’s behavior during the

conflict from an objective third party’s perspective. The result indicated that U.S.

participants were more likely to think that their behavior was perceived as more fair

than the behavior of their counterparts’ from an objective third party perspective,

whereas this tendency was moderated in Japan. Study three, which examined the

fairness of the other negotiator’s offer, and study four, which explored the degree of

anticipated fairness prior to negotiating between the two cultures, both exhibited the

expected results. U.S. participants felt that the offer was much less fair than Japanese

participants, and prior to the negotiation, U.S. negotiators expected that they would be

more fair than their counterparts as compared with Japanese negotiators. Study four

also found that U.S. negotiators would be more inclined to accept feedback when it was

self-serving and to reject feedback when it brought damage to the self, whereas the

reversed tendencies were found among Japanese negotiators. Gelfand et al. argue that

the U.S. cultural imperative of “standing out” may make self-serving bias more

reasonable and be part of normal adaptations to individualist cultures.

2. Illusions of Control

A second domain in which most individuals’ perceptions appear to be less than realistic

concerns beliefs about personal control over environmental occurrences. Many theorists (e.

g., Bandura, 1997 ; Heider, 1958) have maintained that a sense of personal control is

integral to the self-concept and self-esteem. Although extensive writing on psychological

control beliefs exists, it is mainly based on Western, individualistic views of control. In

most American theories and research, a common theme is that psychological control

means that the individual actively seeks to change existing physical, social, or behavioral

realities to fit his or her cognitive, affective, and behavioral needs. This view of control

holds that individuals who believe the existing situation cannot be changed or is beyond

one’s ability or effort to change is pathological in some way, termed learned helplessness

or low self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), possibly resulting from low self-esteem.

Cross-cultural studies (Chang, Chua, & Toh, 1997 ; Markus & Kitayama, 1991 ;

Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002 ; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984) have

indicated that there are at least two forms of psychological control that differ between

the West and the East. In the West, primary control focusing on influence is emphasized,

and in the East, secondary control focusing on adjustment is stressed. Primary control

may be defined as a belief that individuals can enhance their rewards by influencing

existing realities such as other people or circumstances. Secondary control is defined as

the belief that individuals can enhance their rewards by accommodating to existing

realities via changing their cognition, affects and/or behaviors (Weisz et al., 1984).

Rothbaum, Weisz and Snyder (1982) suggested four major types of secondary control :

predictive (attempts to accurately predict events and conditions in order to control their


impact on self, e.g., to avoid uncertainty, anxiety, or future disappointment), vicarious

(attempts to associate or closely align oneself with other individuals, groups, or

institutions in order to participate psychologically in the control they exert), illusory

(attempts to associate or get into synchrony with chance in order to enhance comfort with

and acceptance of one’s fate), and interpretive (attempts to understand or construe

existing realities in order to derive a sense of meaning or purpose from them and thereby

enhance one’s satisfaction with them). These four forms of control share the same

quality in that individuals actively change some aspects of the self in order to minimize

the negative psychological impact and to maximize the potential satisfaction in the face

of stressful events.

Mahler, Greenberg and Hayashi (1981) found that the Japanese were much more likely

than Americans to believe that a) the world is a capricious place where individuals do not

always attain the outcomes they deserve, b) individuals can have only limited

effectiveness acting alone, and c) chance and fate have a major influence on the outcomes

individuals experience. In fact, Parsons and Schneider (1974) found that, relative to

Americans, Japanese felt fate and luck much more influential, and perceived themselves

as less able to change others’ opinions. In addition, Weisz et al (1984) reported that,

whereas the Japanese most preferred way to live was close association with others and

dissuaded attempts to make realities suit one’s own desires, Americans preferred the way

that emphasized self-directed pursuit of self actualization and depreciated association

with others.

Morling, Kitayama, and Miyamoto (2002) tested the hypothesis that Americans and

Japanese are attuned to their cultural practices that emphasize “influence” (primary

control) in the United States and “adjustment” (secondary control) in Japan.（３） Their

results revealed that Americans remembered more, and more recent, influence-attempt

situations whereas Japanese remembered more, and more recent, situations that involves

adjustment. In addition, American-made influence situations evoked stronger feelings of

efficacy, whereas Japanese-made adjustment situations evoked stronger feelings of

relatedness. Furthermore, Americans reported more efficacy than Japanese, especially

when responding to influence situations. Japanese felt more interpersonally close than

Americans, especially when responding to adjustment situations.

The preceding evidence suggests that Japanese may perceive primary control as both

less attainable and less desirable than Americans, which in turn implies that control

illusion, which is based on primary control, may be weaker and even irrelevant to

Japanese who emphasize adjustment or secondary control more (Rothbaum et al., 1982).

Cheng et al. (1997) attributes the Eastern emphasis on adjustment and de-emphasis on

influence to the Asia worldview :

The individual as an integral part of the universe has a limited, pre-charted course

in life. It would be healthy for the individual to “flow with” the tide rather than fight

it. Taoists and Buddhists are especially against the assertion of the self or the



93

agentic part of the self in an attempt to change reality. Taoists and Buddhists,

instead, maintain that the way to long-lasting happiness and fulfillment (nirvana) is

to have “no self,” “no desire” and “no complaints.” This state of perfection and

fulfillment can be attained by a change of the self, in terms of the self’s cognition,

affect and behavior (p.97).

3. Unrealistic Optimism

Unrealistic optimism refers to as the tendency for people to believe that positive events

are more likely to occur and negative events are less likely to happen to them than

others (Heine & Lehman, 1995). In future-oriented Western cultures, most people appear

to hold the belief, “The future will be great especially for me,” but since it is impossible

for most people’s future to be brighter than their similar others’, this excessive optimism

may be illusory. In non-Western cultures, however, this extreme optimism can be

attenuated.

Heine and Lehman (1995) compared levels of unrealistic optimism for Canadian (a

culture typical of an independent construal of self) and Japanese students (a culture

typical of an interdependent construal of self). In the first study, participants were asked

what the estimated chances were that a number of positive (e.g., “You will live past the

age of 80,” “Sometime in the future you will own your own home”) and negative future

events (e.g., “Sometime in the future you will develop skin cancer,” or “You will get

divorced a few years after marriage”) would happen to them compared to other students.

The results indicated that Canadians were found significantly more unrealistically

optimistic than Japanese. Compared to Japanese, Canadians reported that positive

events were more likely to happen to themselves than to others. In addition, Canadians

felt those future events were more controllable than Japanese, suggesting a stronger

illusion of control on the part of Canadians.

In the second study, 10 negative independent future events (e.g., Sometime in the

future you will be an alcoholic) and 10 negative interdependent future events (e.g.,

Sometime in the future you will do something that will make your family ashamed of

you) were evaluated. Heine and Lehman anticipated that independent events would be

more threatening than interdependent events for Canadians and that interdependent

events would be more threatening than independent events for Japanese. It was found

that Canadians were more unrealistically optimistic than Japanese for both independent

and interdependent events. Moreover, although Canadians exhibited significant

unrealistic optimism for both independent and interdependent events, Japanese showed

significant unrealistic pessimism for both types of events.

Heine and Lehman (1995) argue that unrealistic optimism may serve a self-protective

function. In line with Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) conceptualization of independent

and interdependent construals of self, they assert that in an individualistic culture where

one’s independent construals of self are stressed, self-enhancing evaluations place people

in a favorable position in the face of threatening events, which helps relieve the


independent self of some of the stress associated with these events. On the other hand, in

a collectivistic culture where one’s interdependent construals of self are stressed, self-

enhancing evaluations may serve only to isolate the interdependent self from collectivist

network, and thus, this isolation could hardly be conceived as coping mechanism when

confronted with threat. Heine and Lehman concluded, “the self-effacing manner of

viewing their futures as about average, or sometimes even worse than average, appears

more characteristic of Japanese” (p.604).

Accounts and Self-enhancing Bias

To the extent that the individual’s self-enhancing tendency has a great impact on the

interpretation of the reality he or she is facing, it may also affect his or her choice of

account-making tactics. Many theorists (Buttny, 1993 ; Schonbach, 1990 ; Snyder &

Higgins, 1988 ; Weiner, Figueroa-Munoz, & Kakihira, 1991) agree that the basic

functions of account-making are to maintain and promote individual’s self-esteem（４）and

the sense of control. For example, Snyder & Higgins (1988) argue that account-making（５）

is the process in the context of “reality negotiation.” All people are holding so-called self-

theories of reality, which operate to form their views of themselves and the exterior

world. When they are confronted with the events that threaten their self-theories,

correcting the inconsistencies between the new and old information about the self

becomes inevitable. The new self-view, constructed as a consequence of the process of

responding to and accepting new personal information, is a “negotiated reality.” The

negotiated reality is constantly changing in response to the endless flow of challenging

events, though a certain version of negotiated reality may be temporarily prevailing over

others (Snyder & Higgins, 1988).

In Snyder and Higgins’ theory, offering accounts is a volitional course of action that

intends to maintain the underlying motives of positive self-image and control upon which

the personal self-theory is based. In order to accomplish these objectives, the actor

distorts information so as to facilitate the preservation and promotion of these motives.

The extent to which the actor can alter information, however, is restricted by the reality

defined by other people (e.g., partners and/or observers), because negotiated reality can

be seen as an agreed-upon interpretation of the failure event（６） between the parties

concerned. The actor may have to admit the partner’s rules and opinions that shape his

or her reality in the course of reality negotiation. Nonetheless, the actor leans heavily

toward his or her personal interpretation of the event. A negotiated reality, therefore, is

the actor’s subjective estimation that he or she deems valid and the partner would not

raise serious doubts about his or her interpretation.

Failure events normally reduce the participants’ self-esteem and sense of control. The

actor may lose them by realizing the negative consequence of the failure event or being

confronted with a harsh reproach attacking directly either his or her control

competencies or self-esteem. By the same token, the actor’s unreasonable accounts may

give the partner the feelings of loss of control and self-esteem. The participants’ feelings



95

of self-esteem and control are assumed to be extremely vulnerable in failure events, and

this vulnerability of control beliefs and feelings of self-worth frequently provoke certain

maladaptive reproaches and accounts. Such maladaptive reproaches and accounts that do

not take into consideration of the need of the other participants are issued to sustain self-

esteem and a sense of control, and if egocentric reproaches meet with egocentric accounts,

a likely consequence is an escalation of conflict and ill feeling (Schonbach, 1990).

It is important to note that an underlying motive behind people’s self-serving

attribution is to secure feelings of control ; i.e., people tend to attribute personal success

to self-relevant factors (e.g., ability and/or effort) but attribute personal failures to

environmental factors (e.g., luck and/or task difficulty) so that they can gain a sense of

control over their own result. Schlenker (1980) argues that attribution processes should

be viewed not only as a means of providing the actor with his or her view of the world,

but as a means of upholding his or her effective exercise of control in that world. He

contends : “The necessity for feelings of personal control as prerequisites for action, then,

could produce perceptions and attributions that appear to be self-serving and esteem

enhancing” (p.90).

Compared to the self-serving bias and the perceived control, the theoretical link

between optimism and account-making is less clear. However, it seems that an

individual’s optimism tendency serves to alter the perception of failure events. Optimistic

individuals, by definition, tend to view communication situations more optimistically, and

thus may perceive failure events less negatively than average people. The positive

evaluation of the failure events is likely to provide an advantage to the actor in the

process of reality negotiation. It is possible to speculate that the optimistic evaluation of

the situation may operate on manipulating the partner-defined reality in the process of

reality negotiation such that the optimistic actor can construct more self-serving accounts.

Implications for Interpersonal Accounts between Japan and North America

As argued above, there appears to be a strong theoretical link between account-making

and self-enhancement biases, especially positive view of the self (e.g., self-serving biases)

and control beliefs. What are the implications for the interpersonal accounts across

cultures? In order to delve into this issue, a brief review of interpersonal account

research may be in order.

There are at least four types of accounts : concessions, excuses, justifications, and

refusals (Schonbach, 1990), which are ordered on a “mitigating-aggravating continuum”

with concessions as the most mitigating forms, followed by excuses and justifications,

with refusals portraying the most aggravating forms of accounts (McLaughlin, Cody, &

Rosenstein, 1983 ; McLaughlin, Cody, & O’Hare, 1983). Research evidence supports that

concessions and excuses are more mitigating than justifications and refusals (Cody &

McLaughlin, 1985 ; Holtgraves, 1989 ; McLaughlin, Cody, & Rosenstein, 1983 ;

McLaughlin, Cody, & O’Hare, 1983).

In addition, accounts can be analyzed in terms of the perceived causality of failure


events : locus (internal vs. external), controllability (controllable vs. uncontrollable), and

stability (stable vs. unstable) (Cody, Kersten, Braaten, & Dickson, 1992 ; Dunn & Cody,

2000 ; Weiner, 1992 ; Weiner, 1995 ; Weiner et al., 1991). For example, if a person were

late for the business meeting because of a traffic accident on the road, then that cause

would be classified as external, uncontrollable, and unstable. However, if the same

person were late for the meeting because he or she simply forgot it, it would be internal,

controllable, unstable cause, and if that individual frequently forgot the meeting, then it

would be a stable cause.

The locus of a cause influences the actor’s self-esteem (Weiner et al., 1991), and this

dimension is directly related to self-enhancement bias, because self-enhancers tend to

attributes successes to internal causes and attributes failures to external causes. The

controllability dimension of causality is linked with affects including anger and pity.

Anger is a primary consequence after an individual has performed a controllable act that

hurts others, but pity and sympathy may be aroused by uncontrollable difficulties. The

dimension of stability concerns expectancy of success and failure. Failure in exam

attributed to a stable cause such as low ability is expected to repeat because ability is

conceived as an enduring property. However, attribution of failure to an unstable cause

such as temporary illness or bad luck is not likely to recur in future (Weiner et al., 1991).

Provided that cultural differences of self-enhancing motives and the variety of account

tactics available, the following proposition regarding cultural preferences of account

tactics may be posited :

Proposition 1 : To the extent that North Americans have greater self-enhancing

motives (esp., self-serving bias and need for primary control) than Japanese,

North Americans are expected to use more self-serving accounts than Japanese

in failure events.

Self-serving accounts may include excuses, justifications and denials. Excuses are

explanations in which an actor admits that the act in question is bad, wrong, and

inappropriate but denies full responsibility (Scott & Lyman, 1968). Excuses are usually

considered mitigating accounts (Cody & McLaughlin, 1990 ; McLaughlin, Cody, & O’Hare,

1983), and therefore, regarded as less self-serving than justifications. Nonetheless,

excuses are fundamentally similar to justifications (Schonbach, 1990) and include self-

serving qualities in that an actor usually makes excuses in an attempt to reduce his or

her responsibility. Although virtually all excuses have the properties of externality,

uncontrollability, and instability (Weiner, 1992), the externality dimension is particularly

relevant here because it is the very dimension that may affect the Japanese and North

American account-making. More specific, excuses for external causes (e.g., being late

because of accident) are more self-serving than internal causes (e.g., being late because of

oversleeping). People may use excuses for actions caused by external sources to protect

their own self-esteem. Sometimes, real, internal reasons are withheld, and false, external



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reasons are offered as an excuse (Weiner, 1992). Because North Americans are more

motivated to protect and enhance their self-esteem than Japanese, the former may use

more excuses with external causes than the latter, and this may include the case in

which the real, internal reasons are deliberately hidden, and the false, external reasons

are revealed. Excuses including appeal to accident and scapegoating (e.g., “My friend told

me this was the correct form”) are examples of external causes.

Justifications are accounts in which an actor accepts responsibility for the act in

question, but denies the negativity involved in it and claims the positive consequences

that prevail over the negative outcomes (Scott & Lyman, 1968). Typical justifications

include direct minimization (“No harm done”), justification through comparison

(“everyone does it” or “some people do much worse things”), and justifications through

higher goals (“I did it out of a sense of loyalty”) (Schlenker, 1980). All of these

justifications are used to minimize the negative implications of the acts so that the actor

can promote a positive image of self and protect against negative image, i.e., self-

enhancing motive. Given that North Americans have a stronger self-enhancing motive

than Japanese, it seems reasonable to assume that North Americans use more

justifications than Japanese.

Denials are assertions in which an actor claims the alleged failure event never

occurred, or clearly denies his or her personal involvement in the failure event and does

not accept his or her responsibility (Schonbach, 1990). The actor may use “defense of

nonoccurrence,” to show that the alleged event did not occur, or “defense of noncausation”

(“I didn’t do it.”) to show that he or she is not responsible at all for the alleged

undesirable event. Denials are effective only in limited situations where the partner

accepts them as something believable. If alleged undesirable events were observed and

accusations were made, denials would be seen as extremely self-protective and self-

serving. Although “reality constraints” normally operate to prevent the actors from

distorting the facts beyond what is acceptable, most situations involve some ambiguous

elements that the accurate allocation of responsibility is not possible. In addition, facts

can be selected and interpreted in multiple ways. Thus, egocentric actors may try out

their preferred interpretations of situations so as to present the situation in a positive

light, hoping that the partners will accept their accounts.

Compared to excuses, justifications, and denials, concessions are more mitigating and

the least self-serving accounts. In a concession, the actor neither denies responsibility nor

attempts to justify improper behavior, but simply admits to the failure in question.

Concessions are often accompanied by apologies, expressions of remorse, offers

compensation, etc. In concessions with apologies, the actor attempts to persuade the

partner to view the undesirable event as not a fair representation of what he or she

really is like, redressing the past and promising to improve his or her behavior in the

future (Schlenker, 1980). Concessions effectively alleviate the partner’s resentment (Itoi,

Ohbuchi, & Fukuno, 1996) and help maintain relational harmony. Apologies, which are

admissions of an individual’s weakness, reflect the Japanese tendency for critical self-


evaluation. In North America, however, apologies are perceived self-denigrating and

psychologically damaging because they interfere with self-enhancing orientation (Heine

et al., 1999).

Proposition 2 : To the extent that North Americans have greater self-serving

attribution of fairness than Japanese, North American actors are expected to

perceive their partners’ reproaches more unfairly than Japanese.

Accounts can be viewed as a response to the partner’s reproaches (Schonbach, 1990).

The partner’s reproaches, which are usually issued before accounts, vary from very mild

to very severe depending on his or her interpretation of the failure event. Because self-

serving attribution of fairness implies that North Americans tend to consider their own

conducts more fair than what actually are, they may feel the partner’s reproaches to be

more harsh and unfair, which may end up giving more aggravating accounts.

Schonbach’s (1990) theory of conflict escalation explicitly depicts this interaction process.

Given that North Americans are likely to consider themselves more fair than Japanese, it

seems logical that, compared with Japanese, North Americans perceive their partners’

reproaches as unfair and their own accounts as fair explanations of the failure events.

Proposition 3 : To the extent that North Americans have greater self-enhancing

motives (esp., unrealistic optimism) than Japanese, North Americans are

expected to view failure events less negatively than Japanese.

Given that North Americans are more optimistic than Japanese, they may be more

confident in coping with stressful failure events. This optimism has to do with the

perceptions of primary control (the belief that an individual’s behavior can produce a

desired outcome). An individual’s exaggerated perception of control provides confidence,

which in turn permits North Americans to perceive the failure events less negatively. In

addition, North American future orientation helps prevent them from worrying too much

about what has already happened. The differences of the perceived negative implications

for the failure events between North Americans and Japanese apparently have influences

on their choice of accounts, as posited in proposition 1.

Proposition 4 : The greater an individual’s self-enhancing motive is, more likely he

or she use self-serving accounts. Correspondingly, the greater an individual’s self

-effacing motive is, the more likely he or she is to use less self-serving accounts.

To the extent that self-enhancing tendencies influence the preference of account tactics,

an individual with a higher self-enhancing motive should use more self-serving accounts

(e.g., excuses, justifications, and denials), regardless of his or her cultural membership.

Culture affects its members’ values, norms, opinions, beliefs, behaviors, and so on, and



99

thus, North American culture is more conducive to its members’ self-enhancing biases,

and Japanese culture is more conducive to its members’ self-effacing tendencies

(Kitayama et al., 1997). Nevertheless, individuals are not totally subject to their cultural

influence. Like many other self-concepts such as independent and interdependent self-

construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), there should be considerable individual

differences of self-enhancing biases within a given culture. Evidently, not all North

Americans are self-enhancing and not all Japanese are self-effacing. The distinction

between self-enhancing and self-effacing is a general propensity that may surface when

members of the culture are evaluated as a group. Given the assumption that the self-

enhancing bias affects the use of accounts, and North Americans are more self-enhancing

than Japanese, there should be more North Americans with higher self-enhancing

tendencies than Japanese. Similarly, there should be more Japanese with less self-

enhancing (higher self-effacing) than North Americans. For the self-enhancing bias to act

as a mediating variable in cross-cultural research, the individual-level, within-culture

analysis of the construct is necessary.

Conclusion

Cultural differences of self-enhancing tendencies have attracted considerable research

interest in the field of cultural psychology because self-enhancement needs has long been

considered universal that transcends particular eras and cultures. The fact that the

recent special issue（７）of Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology was devoted to “Culture

and Self-Enhancing Bias” reflects the enthusiasm concerning this research topic.

Although the debate on the universality of self-enhancement needs is yet to be settled,（８）

most researchers seem to agree that cultural difference exits. The differences of self-

enhancement motives are attributed to individuals’ self-construals ; People with

independent self-construals (e.g., North Americans) are self-enhancing, whereas those

with interdependent self-construals (e.g., Japanese) are self-effacing or self-improving

(e.g., Heine, 2003 ; Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman, 2001 ; Heine, Kitayama, Lehman et al.,

2001 ; Heine & Lehman, 1995 ; Heine et al., 1999 ; Kitayama et al., 1997 ; Markus &

Kitayama, 1991).

Albeit the significance of self-enhancement as a construct and the theoretical link with

interpersonal accounts, numerous studies on accounting for untoward conduct have been

done with no attention to this variable. This paper attempted to fill this gap by

incorporating self-enhancing motives into the framework of interpersonal account

research. The implications of the self-enhancing motive are far-reaching. Given that most

communication problems stem from perceptual gap between the participants, the actor’s

self-enhancing motive, which provides him or her with a distorted reality, is likely to play

a critical role in not only interpersonal accounts but also many other genres of

interpersonal communication.

A total of four testable propositions concerning self-enhancing motive and interpersonal

accounts are presented. Future research should empirically test the tenability of these


propositions. Also, research efforts should be exerted to explicate how self-enhancing

biases interact with situational variables. For instance, a recent study (Takata, 2003)

suggests that competitive situations induce self-enhancing bias and that competition-free

situations induce self-critical tendency among Japanese. In addition, Kitayama et al

(1997) emphasize the importance of culturally shared situational definitions that the

members of the culture follow, and because each culture has chosen and maintained

situational definitions that are effective in endorsing their own cultural imperatives,

many North American situations encourage self-enhancing whereas many Japanese

situations discourage it. The inclusion of these situational effects would definitely

advance our understanding of interpersonal accounts.

NOTES（１） In line with Weiner’s (Weiner, 1979) conceptualization, many studies on self-serving

attributional bias include four factors : ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. Ability and

effort are internal and task difficulty and luck are designed as external attributions.

（２） A collective constructionist theory of the self proposed by Kitayama et al. (1997)

supports Kudo and Numazaki’s contention. Kitayama et al. maintain that many

psychological processes (e.g., self-enhancement and self-criticism) result from and support

the ways in which social acts and situations are collectively defined and subjectively

experienced in the respective cultural contexts. That is, American situations are more

conducive to self-enhancement, whereas Japanese situations are more conducive to self-

criticism.

（３） Morling et al. used less biased terms such as “influence” and “adjustment” instead of the

original “primary” and “secondary” control because primary control may not universally

precede secondary control, especially in interdependent cultural milieus.

（４） Some theorists use the term, “face” instead of “self-esteem.” Although face and self-

esteem are not the identical concepts, they are, nevertheless, conceptually similar with

many common attributes, and thus, no differentiation was made here.

（５） Snyder and Higgins refer to “excuse-making” rather than “account-making” in their

article.

（６） The term “failure event” is used to denote the specific behavior or offense that resulted

in an account’s being requested, offered, and evaluated (Schonbach, 1990).

（７） Volume 34, No.5, September 2003.

（８） Instead of finding the differences in the presence and absence of the self-enhancement

bias per se, some cross-cultural psychologists assume that cultures differ in the degree to

which they permit, promote, or restrain the expression of the tendency (Brown &

Kobayashi, 2003).

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