Self Esteem Across Cultures: The Chinese Dialectical Self
Self-esteem is generally considered to be something vital, a value in itself, in Western societies. In this first of a series on our sense of self, or lack of it, I am going to look at the apparent lack of self-esteem in Chinese compared to North American students.
Self-esteem is generally considered to be something vital, a value in itself, in Western societies. Dr Simon elsewhere on this blog has plenty to say about the potential dangers of uncritically valuing self-esteem. But not every society puts the same value on self-esteem; in fact, not every society has the same sense of self. In this first of a series on our sense of self, or lack of it, I am going to look at the apparent lack of self-esteem in Chinese compared to North American students.
It has been shown repeatedly in psychological studies that East Asians have lower self-esteem when compared to North Americans. More than this, the self-esteem scores do not seem to indicate that the East Asians studied are motivated by increasing their self-esteem. Kim, Peng and Chui in the 2008 study “Explaining Self-esteem Differences between Chinese and North Americans: Dialectical Self (vs. Self-consistency) or Lack of Positive Self-regard” (Self and Identity, 7:113-128) tried to interpret this intriguing difference. Surely it is not the case that East Asians have no need for positive self regard at all?
The researchers started out with the hypothesis that the self-esteem question was linked to deeper differences in the whole concept, or feeling, of a self on either side of the east-west divide. The authors began with the observation that people from East Asian cultures are familiar with the idea that an individual can have more than one self, or side to themselves, both positive and negative. The two sides — the dark and light, good and bad, yin and yang — make up a whole, and the self is incomplete with only one side. In addition to this, according to Confucian philosophy and ancient Chinese wisdom such as the I Ching, or Book of Changes, it is the meeting of these opposites, the pushing forward of one side and the retreat of the other, which leads to change. The change is not permanent, because of course the ‘other side’ is just awaiting its turn. On the other hand, Americans value consistency, so a bad feature might be felt to invalidate the goodness of the self, or create an insurmountable contradiction. Also, change is not so easy to conceptualise or believe in, and it may be feared if it is felt to be permanent. Hence, maybe, we find a sense of ‘progress’ without end, yet a shadow anxiety as we intuit that this is not really the way things work.
This piece of research involved participants agreeing or disagreeing to statements — using Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale — such as “on the whole, I am satisfied with myself”, or “on the whole, I am not satisfied with myself”. The East Asian participants, true to form, came out as having lower self-esteem in the final calculations, because they agreed that more negatively worded statements applied to them. Americans, on the other hand, tended to vary their responses according to the wording of the question, finding it easy and appropriate to agree with statements that were positively worded, but avoiding agreement with negatively worded items on the self-esteem measure. Moreover, the need for consistency made the order of the questions important — if the first item in the list was positively worded, then Americans tended to stick to the pattern.
To invent an example, if asked about extraverted behaviour, then about introverted behaviour, a North American who had agreed that they often displayed extraverted behaviour would then be extremely unlikely also to agree that they sometimes behave in an introverted way. A Chinese participant would see no contradiction here and would be as likely as not to agree that sometimes they are introverted, too.
It was clearly shown to be the case that agreement with the positively worded statements influenced motivation in both groups. So it is not that self-esteem is somehow irrelevant or unimportant to the East Asian students compared with their American peers, but rather that their sense of self-esteem is not affected by accepting more negative sounding statements. The East Asian respondents with their sense of a dialectical self, made up of the light and dark, positive and negative, changing over time, made full use of positive self-esteem statements to motivate themselves, yet did not appear to restrict or edit themselves into a constant, one dimensional picture of themselves, internally self consistent at any price.
2 Responses to “Self Esteem Across Cultures”
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SELF ESTEEM AND THE FACE OF LOOSING IT.
Cultural diversity and interpretation of self esteem plays an important part in defining what we mean by ” self esteem’ here often refered ( in China) as modesty or loosing face.
Its confusing for westerners , because its considered normal for Chinese to adhere to old values, most Sundays you will see grandchildren leading their grandparents about,this is considdered normal.
Wheras in the West its not.
Chinese will avoid eye contact but this is due to modesty and not to low selfsteem.
However that is merely a Chinese things,subserviance does not mean low self esteem.
There is a confusion in the interpretation.
An eg, was the recent sale of antiques at a famous action house,the Chinese were incensed about their valuables being sold abroad,they considder it their heritage but do not accept the dammage to valuables that was done during the cultural revolution…….I point this out to show the perception of cultural attitude when it come to deciding and sellecting the interpretationof issues.
Taiwan where the nationalist fled taking with them vast amounts of treusures, which is now housed in musuems and proudly displayed is still a bone of contention between the two countries.
I live in China and to us foreingers Chinese seem to suffer from a self esteem, however this is far from the truth in my opnionion and we merely how we interpret modesty as low self esteem.
Compare the way westerners behave abroad;unfortunately and I generalise they are loud and demanding, assuming they are entitled to many more things than locals; why because they have been conditioned so to believe( that of course is a minority)
Hong Kong is a safe organised place inspite of 7 million people living in confined spaces; you will rarely see vandalism,there is the occasional grafitti,I suspect by a someone on holiday but in general its organised we have a lot to learn from the Chinese and in case you feel I am being defensive and protective of their systeem and their assumed low self esteem,rather that than the unsafe,vandal ridden west.
with appologies .
lee du ploy Hong Kong
Hi Lee – I am not sure if we are understanding each other correctly – you have no need to apologise, I am making the same point as you, that cultures differ, are equally valid, and have much to learn from each other.
In the case of the study I was writing about, it is clear that as far as self esteem is concerned the North American measurements ‘normally’ used are just not big enough to capture all of our human experience.