Individual differences in perceived esteem across cultures

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate individual differences in perceived esteem (perceptions of how positively one is viewed by others) and the relationship between perceived esteem, self-esteem, self-monitoring, and life satisfaction across cultures. A study with Japanese and American college students (and a pilot study with Caucasian and Asian American participants), indicated that a 10-item measure of perceived esteem, assessing such perceptions across a variety of target others, was internally consistent and had a unitary factor structure across cultural groups. Among Japanese participants, perceived esteem predicted unique variance in other-directed self-monitoring and life satisfaction beyond that of self-esteem, while self-esteem accounted for perceived esteem's effect on both variables for Americans. These findings suggest that perceived esteem, independent of self-worth, is particularly important to social functioning and life satisfaction for those in collectivistic cultures.

Acknowledgments

A Willamette University Presidential Scholars Program Grant awarded to the second author supported this work. Also, some data were collected in connection with the 2004 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates in Culture, Language, and Cognition at Northwestern University.

The authors wish to thank the members of the Self Research Lab at Willamette University, Cindy Pickett, and Bob Arkin for feedback on this work and Russ Fazio and Michael Olson for their assistance on the initial development of some of the items in the PEI.

Notes

1. The term reflected appraisals is often used to refer to such perceptions, but is frequently operationalized as judgments about specific traits (e.g., intelligence, sociability). We use the term “perceived esteem” to refer to general perceptions of others' global evaluations.

2. In this study, 1101 participants completed the PEI and a variety of other measures (Reifman & collaborators, 2004). Exploratory and confirmatory analyses using a MWL extraction indicated a single-factor structure.

3. In this study, 98 students completed the PEI at one-week intervals, reported their SAT scores, and completed a 13-item social desirability scale (Reynolds, 1982).

4. Analyses excluding participants of other ethnic backgrounds revealed similar effect sizes. They were, however, included in subsequent analyses for the sake of completeness and to retain statistical power.

5. It is important to note that, although relationship harmony and perceived esteem are likely to be related, they are conceptually and statistically distinct. Whereas relationship harmony refers to balance and mutuality in one's important relationships, perceived esteem refers to one's perceptions of how others of varying degrees of importance and closeness evaluate the self. Whereas relationship harmony is not correlated with self-esteem (cf. Kwan et al., 1997), perceived esteem is positively correlated with it.

6. Analyses of the Acting (American α = .54; Japanese α = .41) and Extraversion (American α = .55; Japanese α = .33) subscales yielded somewhat lower alphas for the Japanese sample than for the Americans. Although these measures were not of theoretical interest for the present hypotheses, these analyses may suggest variability in the meaning of these constructs between these two cultures, and that they be interpreted with caution.

7. A one-tailed Fisher's z-test did, however, indicate that the PEI and the RSES were more strongly correlated in the main study than the pilot, z = 1.76, p < .05. Although it is unclear why the correlations differed, the sample in the main study was larger, more homogenous in terms of age and ethnicity (i.e., all Caucasian and 95% between 18 and 19) and was recruited through a requirement in an introductory psychology course, while the pilot sample was generally more heterogeneous in age and ethnicity (e.g., included some non-Asian, bilingual participants) and volunteered to participate.

8. Although we did not have hypotheses about interactions between perceived esteem and self-esteem or 3-way interactions between perceived esteem, self-esteem, and group, we did conduct this analysis for both variables and they were not statistically significant in either case (two-way ps < .30 and three-way ps < .60).