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The need for separation or individuation is held to be a prime motive in Western psychology. Varied accounts of the meaning of selfhood in Japan indicate that separation may be much less important—or as important—for understanding the construction of self-identity in that culture. We focus here on personal distinctiveness, one vehicle for separation from others. We propose that the desire for distinctiveness is not absent or negligible in Japan, but is subject to more constrained expression than in the West. The results of two studies comparing Japanese and Canadian students suggest that Japanese are less desirous of standing out for their own sake and more likely to experience this form of distinctiveness as aversive. The results also suggest that although Japanese and Canadians derive positive distinctiveness from much the same sources, Japanese are less gratified by this type of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paradoxical self-esteem is defined as contrasting levels of self-liking and self-competence. Consideration of the social and motivational implications of this uncommon form of self-esteem suggests that heightened selectivity in the processing of social information may be behind its persistence. Two experiments were conducted to confirm the prediction of heightened selectivity in paradoxicals. As expected, those paradoxically low in self-liking were more negatively biased in their memory for personality feedback (Study 1) and interpretation of valuatively ambiguous phrases (Study 2) than were their counterparts who shared the same low self-liking but were also low in self-competence. Symmetrical with this result, those paradoxically high in self-liking exhibited a heightened positive bias relative to those who were high in both self-liking and self-competence. The findings are discussed in relation to attitudes and motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the article 'Toward a Conceptualization of Optimal Self-Esteem' published in the January 2003 issue of the 'Psychological Inquiry' journal. Public misrepresentation of one's private self-esteem; Definition of optimal self-esteem; Humanistic principle that underlies the ideal self.