TITLE:
Japanese Are Modest Even When They Are Winners: Competence Ratings of Winners and Losers in Social Comparison
AUTHORS:
Kazuo Mori, Hideko Mori
KEYWORDS:
Social Comparisons; Winners and Losers; Japanese Males; Self-Rating; fMORI Technique
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.4 No.11,
November
22,
2013
ABSTRACT: Social comparison
experiments in two different social conditions, competing between friends and between
strangers, were carried out with 88 Japanese male undergraduates. Participants
were asked to come to the laboratory in friend pairs to participate in the
experiment. Two pairs were randomly combined for each experimental session. In
the Between-Friends condition, one of the two pairs solved 20 anagrams
competitively while the other pair observed them. In the Between-Strangers
condition, one performer and one observer were randomly chosen in each pair and
the performers solved anagram tasks competitively. As in our previous study,
the anagram tasks were presented utilizing a presentation trick so that one performer-and-observer
group viewed easier anagrams than the other group without their noticing the difference.
As intended, those who viewed the easier anagrams outperformed the others,
becoming winners in all sessions. No participants noticed the trick. After the
task, all four participants rated the ability of the two performers including
themselves. Their ability ratings showed that they tended to evaluate their own
ability modestly. Even winners consistently rated themselves lower than the
others rated them. Two possible explanations of why Japanese participants made
such modest responses were presented and discussed.