Evidence reported in the present article suggests that the widely used Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) does not as unequivocally assess positive self-regard in Japan as it does in America. American (n = 98) and Japanese (n = 120) participants assessed high self-esteem (HSE) and low self-esteem (LSE) targets who were depicted endorsing or rejecting RSES items. Results indicate that although both groups of participants had more positive impressions of the HSE relative to the LSE target, the difference was greater for the Japanese. In addition, although the Americans had more positive impressions of the HSE target than the Japanese did, the Japanese had more positive impressions of the LSE target.
Anderson, N.H. ( 1968). Likeableness ratings of 555 personality trait words. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 272-279.
2.
Baron, S.W. ( 2004). General strain, street youth and crime: A test of Agnew’s revised theory. Criminology, 42, 457-483.
3.
Baumeister, R.F., Campbell, J.D., Krueger, J.L., & Vohs, K.D. ( 2003). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles?Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4, 1-44.
4.
Blascovich, J., & Tomaka, J. ( 1991). Measures of self-esteem. J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. W. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (pp. 115-159). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
5.
Braunstein, P., & Doyle. M. W. (Eds.). (2002). Imagine nation: The American counterculture of the 1960s and ‘70s. New York: Routledge.
6.
Brown, J.D., Dutton, K.A., & Cook, K.E. ( 2001). From top down: Self-esteem and self-evaluation. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 615-631.
7.
Brown, J.D., & Kobayashi, C. ( 2002). Self-enhancement in Japan and America. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 5, 145-168.
8.
Brown, R.A. ( 2005). Evaluative ratings of selected Japanese emic trait descriptors . Information & Communication Studies, 33, 15-21.
9.
Brown, R.A. ( 2006). Self-esteem, modest responding, sandbagging, fear of negative evaluation, and self-concept clarity in Japan. Information & Communication Studies, 33, 15-21.
10.
Brown, R.A. ( 2008a). American and Japanese beliefs about self-esteem. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 293-299.
11.
Brown, R.A. ( 2008b). Censure avoidance and self-esteem in Japan. Journal of Social Psychology, 148, 653-666.
12.
Brown, R.A. ( 2008c). The equivalence of self-esteem and jisonshin in Japan . Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 300-304.
13.
Campbell, J.D., Trapnell, P.D., Heine, S.J., Katz, I.M., Lavalee, L.F., & Lehman, D.R. ( 1996). Self-concept clarity: Measurement, personality correlates, and cultural boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 141-156.
14.
Cohen, J. ( 1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
15.
Cohen, J. ( 1990). Things I have learned (so far). American Psychologist, 45, 1304-1312.
16.
Cohen, J. ( 1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin , 112, 155-159.
17.
Converse, J.M., & Presser, S. ( 1986). Survey questions: Handcrafting the standardized questionnaire . Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
18.
Coopersmith, S. ( 1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman.
19.
Cousins, S.D. ( 1989). Culture and self-perception in Japan and the United States . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 124-131.
20.
Dahrendorf, R. ( 2005, March 20). Dangerous politics of values. Japan Times, p. 13.
21.
Ferguson, M.L., & Hassin, R.R. ( 2007). On the automatic association between America and aggression for news watchers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 33, 1632-1647.
22.
Gelman, A., & Stern, H. ( 2006). The difference between "significant" and not significant" is itself not significant. American Statistician, 60, 328-333.
23.
Greenway, A.P., Milne, L.C., & Clarke, V. ( 2003). Personality variables, self-esteem and depression and an individual’s perception of God. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 6, 45-58.
24.
Hashimoto, K. ( 2007). Japan’s language policy and the "lost decade." In A. B. M. Tsui & J. W. Tollefson (Eds.), Language policy, culture, and identity in Asian contexts (pp. 25-36). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
25.
Heine, S.J., & Hamamura, T. ( 2007). In search of East Asian self-enhancement. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 4-27.
26.
Heine, S.J., Lehman, D.R., Markus, H.R., & Kitayama, S. ( 1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-esteem? Psychological Review, 106, 766-794.
27.
Higgins, E.T. ( 1996). Knowledge activation: Accessibility, applicability, and salience. In A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 133-168). New York: Guilford.
28.
Hori, K. ( 2003). Rosenberg (nihongoyaku jisonshin shakudo no kentou). Retrieved September 24, 2008, from http://www.ec.kagawa-u.ac.jp/~hori/yomimono/sesteem.html
29.
Hoshino, A. ( 1970). Japanese title [(kanjou no shinri to kyouiku)] [Affect and education II]. Child Psychology, 24, 161-193.
30.
Kahne, J. ( 1996). The politics of self-esteem. American Educational Research Journal, 33(1), 3-22.
31.
Kitayama, S., & Uchida, Y. ( 2003). Explicit self-criticism and implicit self-regard: Evaluating self and friend in two cultures. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 476-482.
32.
Kobayashi, C., & Brown, J.D. ( 2003). Self-esteem and self-enhancement in Japan and America . Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 567-580.
33.
Kurman, J. ( 2001a). Is self-enhancement related to modesty or to individualism-collectivism? A test with four Israeli groups. Asian Journal of Social Psychology , 4, 225-237.
34.
Kurman, J. ( 2001b). Self-enhancement: Is it restricted to individualistic cultures? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1705-1716.
35.
Kurman, J. ( 2003). Why is self-enhancement low in certain collectivistic cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 496-510.
36.
Kurman, J., & Sriram, N. ( 2002). Interrelationships among vertical and horizontal collectivism, modesty, and self-enhancement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology , 33, 71-86.
37.
Mahler, J. ( 1976). What is the self-concept in Japan? Psychologia , 19, 127-132.
38.
Nisbett, R.E. ( 1993). Violence and U.S. regional culture. American Psychologist, 48, 441-449.
39.
Nollet, C.L., & Button, E.J. ( 2005). Questionnaire measures of psychopathology in eating disorders: Comparisons between clinical groups. European Eating Disorders Review, 13, 211-215.
40.
Paulhus, D.L. ( 1998). Interpersonal and interpsychic adaptiveness of trait self-enhancement: A mixed blessing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1197-1208.
41.
Pawlack, J. ( 2006, December 29). Sex slavery still plagues EU-bound Romania, Bulgaria. Japan Times, p. 7.
42.
Random House Webster’s college dictionary. (1997). New York: Random House.
43.
Riketta, M., & Ziegler, R. ( 2006). Self-ambivalence and self-esteem. Current Psychology: Developmental-Learning-Personality-Social, 25, 192-211.
44.
Robins, R.W., Hendin, H.M., & Trzesniewski, K.H. (2001). Measuring global self-esteem: Construct validation of a single-item measure and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 151-161.
Rosenberg, M. ( 1965). Society and the adolescent self image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
47.
Roszak, T. ( 1969). The making of a counter culture: Reflections on the technocratic society and its youthful opposition. Garden City, NY: Anchor.
48.
Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Toguchi, Y. ( 2003). Pancultural self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 60-79.
49.
Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Vevea, J.L. ( 2005). Pancultural self-enhancement reloaded: A meta-analytic reply to Heine (2005). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 89, 539-551.
50.
Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Vevea, J.L. ( 2007). Inclusion of theory-relevant moderators yield the same conclusions as Sedikides, Gaertner, and Vevea (2005): A meta-analytical reply to Heine, Kitayama, and Hamamura (2007). Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 59-67.
51.
Sheldon, K.M. ( 2004). The benefits of a "sidelong" approach to self-esteem need satisfaction: Comment on Crocker and Park (2004). Psychological Bulletin, 130, 421-424.
52.
Stern, J.A., Rotheram-Borus, M.-J., Swendeman, D., & Milburn, N.G. ( 2005). Predictors of sexual transmission risk behavior among HIV-positive young men. AIDS Care, 17, 433-442.
53.
Tafarodi, R.W., Marshall, T.C., & Katsura, H. ( 2004). Standing out in Canada and Japan. Journal of Personality, 72, 785-914.
54.
Tafarodi, R.W., & Swann, W.B., Jr. (1995). Self-liking and self-competence as a dimensions of global self-esteem: Initial validation of a measure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 65, 322-342.
55.
Taylor, S.E., Lerner, J.S., Sherman, D.K., Sage, R.M., & McDowell, N.K. (2003). Are self-enhancing cognitions associated with healthy or unhealthy biological profiles? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 605-615.
56.
Will, G. ( 2006, December 26). Populism eclipsing quality. Japan Times, p. 16.
57.
Yamaguchi, S., Greenwald, A.G., Banaji, M.R., Murakami, F., Chen, D., Shiomura, K., et al. (2007). Apparent universality of positive implicit self-esteem. Psychological Science, 18, 498-500.
58.
Yamamoto, M., Matsui, Y., & Yamanari, Y. ( 1982). Ninchi sareta jiko no shosokumen no kozo. [Substructure of self-recognition]. Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, 30, 64-68.
59.
Zhang, L., & Baumeister, R.F. (2006). Your money or your self-esteem: Threatened egotism promotes costly entrapment in losing endeavors. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 881-893.
