Cultural differences in self-evaluation - Japanese readily accept negativeself-relevant information

The authors investigated compensatory self-enhancement in Japanese and Cana dian university students. Research has revealed that when North Americans p ublicly discover a weakness in one self domain, they typically bolster thei r self-assessments in another unrelated domain. This effect is less commonl y found in private settings. Following a private failure experience on a cr eativity task, Canadians discounted the negative feedback. although they di d not exhibit a compensatory self-enhancing response. In contrast, Japanese were highly responsive to the failure feedback and showed evidence of reve rse compensatory self-enhancement. This study provides further evidence tha t self-evaluation maintenance strategies are elusive among Japanese samples .