CULTURAL VARIATION IN UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM - DOES THE WEST FEEL MORE INVULNERABLE THAN THE EAST

Levels of unrealistic optimism were compared for Canadians (a culture typical of an independent construal of self) and Japanese (a culture t ypical of an interdependent construal of self). Across 2 studies, Cana dians showed significantly more unrealistic optimism than Japanese, an d Canadians' optimism bias was more strongly related to perceived thre at. Study 2 revealed that Japanese were even less unrealistically opti mistic for events that were particularly threatening to interdependent selves. The authors suggest that self-enhancing biases( such as unrea listic optimism) are, for the most part, absent from the motivational repertoire of the Japanese because the consequent attention to the ind ividual that self-enhancement engenders is not valued in interdependen t cultures.