The formation of gender‐differentiated sentiments in Japan

American reports on Affect Control Theory have consistently demonstrated few gender differences for both lexical semantic meanings and the equations that predict impression formation. This study replicates the conventional methods used in Affect Control Theory research within a Japanese setting to test for such differences. Our analysis suggests great gender‐differentiation in Japanese status, power, and activity. Japanese culture is much more highly gender‐differentiated than American culture in both fundamental sentiments and predictors of transient changes in sentiments. Our analysis confirms the wisdom of using separate gender‐differentiated lexicons of semantic meaning, and separate equations for predicting changes in transient changes in Japanese sentiments. The analysis is consistent with the hypothesis that these cultural and gender differences come from cultural constructions of principles of impression formation rather than dispositional differences.

Notes

All Japanese names in this article follow the Western style with family names listed last and all Japanese transliterations follow the Hepburn system. Portions of this paper were presented at the 1992 annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society and the American Sociological Association. Profs. Miles Patterson and David Heise contributed greatly to the revision of those papers. The data in this paper was collected with the help of a 1990 Fulbright Grant to the senior author. Direct all correspondence to: Herman W. Smith, Department of Sociology, University of Missouri‐St. Louis, St. Louis MO 63121 or by INTERNET to [email protected]