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Compared Malaysian (collectivist) and British (individualist) students on their self-liking and self-competence. Malaysians were lower in self-competence when self-liking was held constant but were higher in self-liking when self-competence was held constant. Differences between groups were not reliable after statistically equating groups on two dimensions of individualism-collectivism. (SLD)

The place of outsiders--strangers and otherwise irrelevant others--in the cultural logic of a society holds likely consequences for social perception. The authors begin by describing how outsiders are viewed in Western, Japanese, and Chinese societies. Comparing the three groups, it is proposed that the Chinese are most strongly disposed to disregard or ignore those outside their networks of affiliation and practical involvement. To test this claim experimentally, we assessed the incidental memory of Canadians, Japanese, and Chinese students for social targets of differing situational relevance to the perceiver. As expected, the Chinese showed greater memory advantage than the other groups for primary over nonprimary targets, but only when provided with an explicit justification for exclusive attention. Keywords: social memory; selective attention; strangers

Personal identity involves continuity of the inner of private self--the intimately familiar me--across time and place. Is this continuity experienced to a similar extent across cultures? East Asian cultures place greater moral emphasis than do Western cultures on the contextual adjustment of personal behavior. This adjustive focus translates into greater variation in the outwardly presented self across contexts, raising the question of whether the inner self is also experienced as less continuous or unchanging by East Asians. To examine this issue and its implications, we asked Canadian, Chinese, and Japanese students to answer a set of questions about the inner self and its behavioral expression. Their responses confirmed a weaker sense of continuity among the Chinese and Japanese but also revealed that socially appropriate expression of the inner self is valued and sought in all three countries. In addition, East Asians claimed to experience self-expression in fewer activity domains than did Canadians. Keywords: personal identity; self-continuity; Canada; Hong Kong; Japan.

This article describes two potential bases for memory bias associated with global self-esteem. According to the mood-congruence model, activation of either dimension of self-esteem (self-competence or self-liking) produces an affective state that facilitates retrieval of traces that are consistent with that state while hindering retrieval of traces that are inconsistent. According to the relevance model, activation of either dimension results in superior encoding of matching negative content by individuals who are low on the dimension. Three studies were conducted to determine which model best accounts for the pattern of bias across distinct content categories. Results were generally consistent with the relevance model.

The children of immigrants possess bicultural identities that reflect their ethnic heritage and their membership in the wider community. For most, strong identification with the dominant culture creates a desire for full inclusion within it. In the case of visible minorities, however, physical dissimilarity is at times experienced as an 'ethnifying' obstacle to assimilation or integration. One response to this challenge is compensatory alignment with the majority group when physical appearance is made salient. To demonstrate this phenomenon, the authors asked Chinese Canadian participants to rate their liking of a set of abstract paintings. The ratings were made in relation to various normative anchors and either in the presence or absence of a mirror. As predicted, only participants in the presence of the mirror showed heightened conformity to the perceived European Canadian (majority group) norm. This tendency, however, was not matched with greater distancing from the perceived Chinese Canadian (minority group) norm.

We argue in this paper for distinguishing two dimensions of global self-esteem, self-competence and self-liking. Studies 1 and 2 identify a corresponding pair of factors in Rosenberg's (1965) Self-Esteem Scale. Studies 3 and 4 examine the predictive value of the two-dimensional approach to self-esteem as reflected in the unique associations of self-competence and self-liking with negative life events and word recognition.

Incidental choice over the features of a task provides both control and personalization. Previous accounts of the tendency of choice to enhance task confidence have emphasized the importance of perceived control. The authors reexamined the enhancement effect to determine whether personalization is equally important. The results of two studies revealed that only choices reflecting personal preferences increased confidence in the task outcome (Study 1) and boosted performance-related self-esteem (Study 2). These findings point to the importance of self-identity expression for understanding the judgmental effects of choice.

Past research suggests that choice in deciding the features of a task can enhance performance. Independent of the quality of performance, choice may also increase the actor's confidence by providing a secondary source of subjective control during the task. In two studies designed to examine this augmentation hypothesis, college students were asked to read and understand a short story. Study 1 revealed that those who selected names to be used in the story felt more confident about their performance than did those who were assigned names, although the groups in fact performed equally. Study 2 revealed that the enhancement was not due to anticipatory confidence, arguing against the possibility that choice was operating as a performance cue. The findings are interpreted in relation to perceived control and implications for motivation and competence are discussed.

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.

Past research has shown that those low in self-esteem tend to persist less after initial failure than do those high in self-esteem. It is not clear, however, whether this motivational [...]

How does the cultural construct of individualism-collectivism relate to global self-esteem? It is proposed that highly collectivist cultures promote the development of one dimension of global self-esteem (generalized self-liking) but challenge the development of the other (generalized self-competence), whereas highly individualist cultures are characterized by the inverse asymmetry. This cultural trade-off hypothesis was investigated by comparing a sample of 302 Chinese with a sample of 343 American college students. The cross-cultural equivalence of the two-dimensional model of self-esteem was first assessed and found to be adequate. Given the high intercorrelation of the 2 self-esteem dimensions, only the unique or non-common part of each dimension was used in hypothesis testing. As predicted, the Chinese were lower in self-competence but higher in self-liking than the Americans. Caveats and implications are discussed.

Can people comprehend assertions without believing them? Descartes (1644/1984) suggested that people can and should, whereas Spinoza (1677/1982) suggested that people should but cannot. Three experiments support the hypothesis that comprehension includes an initial belief in the information comprehended. Ss were exposed to false information about a criminal defendant (Experiments 1 and 2) or a college student (Experiment 3). Some Ss were exposed to this information while under load (Experiments 1 and 2) or time pressure (Experiment 3). Ss made judgments about the target (sentencing decisions or liking judgments). Both load and time pressure caused Ss to believe the false information and to use it in making consequential decisions about the target. In Spinozan terms, both manipulations prevented Ss from 'unbelieving' the false information they automatically believed during comprehension.

Where does self-esteem (SE) come from? Three experiments explored the idea that men's and women's SE arise, in part, from different sources. It was hypothesized that SE is related to successfully measuring up to culturally mandated, gender-appropriate norms - separation and independence for men and connection and interdependence for women. Results from Study 1 suggested that men's SE can be linked to a individuation process in which one's personal distinguishing achievements are emphasized. Results from Study 2 suggested that women's SE can be linked to a process in which connections and attachments to important others are emphasized. Study 3 demonstrated that failing to perform well on gender-appropriate tasks engendered a defensive, compensatory reaction, but only in subjects with high SE. These findings are discussed with regard to their implications for the structure and dynamics of the self

Swann, Wenzlaff, Krull, and Pelham (1992) suggested that depressed and dysphoric persons verify their self-conceptions by seeking rather negative appraisals. Hooley and Richters (1992) and Alloy and Lipman (1992) have worried that (a) idiosyncratic features of Swann et al.'s participants and design may have produced their effects and (b) Swann et al. presented no evidence that self-verification strivings are motivated. We address these issues empirically. Study 1 showed that 20 dysphoric participants preferred interacting with a person who appraised them unfavorably over participating in another study, in comparison with 30 nondysphorics. Study 2 revealed that 26 dysphoric persons responded to feedback that challenged their negative self-view by working to reaffirm their low self-esteem, in comparison with 47 nondysphorics. These findings support the notion that at some level depressed and dysphoric persons want rather negative appraisals.

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 importantor as importantfor 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.

Previous research suggests that paradoxical self-esteem (contrasting levels of self-liking and self-competence) is associated with selective memory for self-relevant information. The form and function of this bias was examined here. College students classified as paradoxical or nonparadoxical viewed a series of trait adjectives. Recognition memory for the words was later tested. Results revealed that heightened selectivity in paradoxicals was limited to words conveying low social worth. Those paradoxically low in self-liking showed distinctively good memory and those paradoxically high in self-liking showed distinctively bad memory for these words. The claim that memory bias contributes to the persistence of paradoxical self-esteem also was tested. As expected, the self-liking of paradoxicals with the strongest memory bias showed the least shift toward self-competence 4 months later.

According to the cultural trade-off hypothesis, individualism and collectivism entail inverse costs and benefits for the two dimensions of global self-esteem. Specifically, individualism is described as promoting the development of self-competence but inhibiting the development of self-liking. Collectivism is described as doing the opposite. To examine the hypothesis, Malaysian (collectivist) and British (individualist) students were compared on their self liking and self-competence. Consistent with predictions, Malaysians were significantly lower in self-competence when self-liking was held constant but were higher in self-liking when self-competence was held constant. The differences, however, were not reliable after statistically equating the cultural groups on two derived dimensions of individualism-collectivism - deference to the direction of relatives and connectedness to parents - suggesting that these dimensions might account for the trade-off in self-esteem.

The adoption of a rigorous experimentalism in the discipline of psychology has imposed tight constraints on what can be asked in psychological research and what sorts of answers given. Over the course of psychology's history the interpretive agent has receded into the background to make way for a more concrete observation language and a mechanistic, functionalist description of mind and behavior. In this context of disciplinary loss and gain, how do psychology's fledgling practitioners-its graduate students-understand the significance of their own research efforts? In this paper, we present thematic and discursive analyses of interviews with a sample of psychology graduate students at a large, public, research university in North America. We explore the manner in which the imperatives of "objectivity," as applied to psychological research, serve paradoxically to enhance the validity of what students feel their research permits them to claim while reducing its personal and social significance. We look at how, in this compromise, students struggle to define their identities as scientists so as to allay doubts about the significance of their work. Their comments provide insight into how psychological knowledge is critically evaluated inside and outside the discipline, and how these two perspectives are dialectically related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese tend to report lower self-esteem than do Westerners. What this behavioral difference indicates about the private sentiments of individuals in Japan and Western countries such as Canada has been earnestly debated in recent years. Consideration of self-esteem ratings as speech acts or performatives shifts the focus of cultural comparison away from the valence of assumed mental representations and onto the pragmatics of agreement with statements of personal value. This alternative framing highlights the importance of performative pressures and other normative considerations in guiding the speech acts whereby self-esteem is typically measured. To support our claim that the self-esteem ratings of Japanese and Canadians are shaped by contrasting performative pressures, we show that explicit instructions designed to offset these pressures predictably raise or lower reported self-esteem. Implications of the results for the meaning and measurement of self-esteem across cultures are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]