Culture and positive illusions in close relationships: How my relationships are better than yours

Although routinely observed among North Americans, self-enhancing biases ha ve been elusive in studies conducted with Japanese. The authors conducted t wo studies of relationship-serving biases (RSBs) with Japanese, Asian Canad ian, and European Canadian participants. In both studies, members of all th ree cultural groups viewed their own relationships (with their best friend, their closest family member; and their romantic partner) as more positive than those of their peers, and to roughly the same extent. Of importance, h owever; (a) RSBs were largely uncorrelated with both self-esteem and self-s erving biases and (b)Japanese (but not the other two cultural groups') RSBs were paralleled by tendencies to view their relationship partners more pos itively than themselves. The authors suggest that relationship enhancement serves a different function than self-enhancement, aiding the individual's quest for connection and belongingness with others.