The Reporting of Self-Esteem in Japan and Canada

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.