Vol.27,No.1 August,2011　

Title
Effects of recalled parental childrearing behaviors on self-esteem in Japanese and South Korean undergraduate students: A behavior analytic interpretation
Author
Sunyoung CHO (Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University)
Yoshiyuki MATSUMOTO (School of Education, Waseda University)
Hiroshi KIMURA (Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University)
Summary
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of recalled parental childrearing behaviors on self-esteem in Japanese and South Korean undergraduate students from the viewpoints of behavior analysis. The participants were 201 Japanese students and 206 Korean students. The results showed that the more they recalled that their parents spoke positively about their relatives to others and the more they recalled that they were praised by their parents when they spoke positively about their relatives to others of childhood, the more they were likely in both countries to speak positively about their relatives to others. Furthermore, they were more likely to have high self-esteem. The results also showed that the larger the difference between present self-evaluation and self-evaluation spoken to others, the lower the self-esteem in Japan. On the other hand, the more they had experience of being praised and the more they recalled that they were praised by their parents when they spoke positively about their relatives to others of childhood, the higher the self-esteem in Korea.
Key words
Japan, Korea, parental childrearing behaviors, self-esteem, behavior analysis
Title
Attitude homophily and relational selectability: An analysis of dyadic data
Author
Itaru ISHIGURO (Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, Japan Women’s University)
Summary
The present study examined attitude similarity among the Japanese using data from a national representative dyadic survey. The Euclidean distance of responses to eight 4-point survey items measuring the values of the respondents and alters was used as the index of the attitude similarity of dyads. Relationships between attitude similarity and urbanism and the size of one’s personal network were measured as indexes of relational selectability. Multilevel analyses revealed the following results: (1) attitude similarity was significantly high among the Japanese; (2) the size of one’s personal network positively and significantly correlated with attitude similarity; and (3) the correlation remained significant even when the similarity of demographic profiles was controlled. These results imply that attitude similarity is determined not by relational structure at the societal level but rather relational structure at the personal network level. The implications of the findings that attitude similarity was relatively weak and did not correlate with urbanism in regard to the subcultural theory of urbanism (Fischer, 1982) are discussed.
Key words
personal network, homophily, similarity-attraction hypothesis, dyadic data
Title
The effects of threat to self-worth on men’s implicit attitude related to gender
Author
Kunio ISHII and Makoto NUMAZAKI (Graduate School of Humanities, Tokyo Metropolitan University)
Summary
It has been shown that people under threat to self-worth exhibit negative implicit attitudes toward minority outgroups (e.g., African Americans in North America) (Spencer, Fein, Wolfe, & Dunn, 1998). But it has not been shown that people under such threat exhibit negative implicit attitudes toward outgroups which are not likely to be negatively evaluated (e.g., women). We conducted an experiment to examine whether male participants under threat to self-worth would exhibit implicit ingroup bias related to gender by using Implicit Association Tests (IATs.) Participants received either self-image threatening feedback about initial tests or no feedback (threat vs. non-threat). They then completed gender attitude IATs. The results showed that participants exhibited stronger implicit ingroup biases related to gender in the threat condition than in the nonthreat condition. The role of threat to self-worth in men’s implicit gender attitude is discussed.
Key words
implicit attitude, ingroup bias, threat to self-worth, gender prejudice
Title
The effect of best friend selection among freshmen
Author
Mai WATANABE (Graduate School of Social Welfare, Hokusei Gakuen University)
Tamio IMAGAWA (Department of Psychology for Well-being, School of Social Welfare, Hokusei University)
Summary
The purpose of this study was to investigate if participants changed their best friend or not over a three-month period after they entered university. The second purpose was to clarify how the pattern of selection of their best friend influenced the indices of interaction with friends among three points in time. Participants numbered 304 freshmen (131 male and 173 female students). They were administered a questionnaire on 3 occasions. According to the results, 44.4％ of participants did not change their best friend during the 3 months. However, 55.6％ of participants changed their best friend once or twice. These results showed the occurrence of early differentiation of relatedness in relationship development. On the other hand, these results also suggested that the reason why the relationship developed could not be explained only by the early differentiation of relatedness.
Key words
close relationship process, same-sex friendship, first-year students in college, selection of a best friend
Title
Effects of relational efficacy on emotional experiences in romantic relationships: An intersubjective efficacy expectation
Author
Ryosuke ASANO (Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Nagoya University)
Summary
This article investigated how relational efficacy affects emotional experiences in romantic relationships. Relational efficacy, which is a shared or intersubjective efficacy expectation of relationship partners, refers to a pair’s belief that they can mutually coordinate and integrate their resources to prevent and resolve any problem; this concept is based on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997, 2001). Participants were 107 dating heterosexual couples. The results of multilevel structural equation modeling analysis suggested that couples higher in relational efficacy experienced more positive emotions, but not negative emotions. Additionally, it is suggested that partners higher in perceived relational efficacy experienced more positive emotions, but not negative emotions. The implications of the results and their contribution to existing literature are discussed.
Key words
relational efficacy, intersubjectivity, romantic relationships, emotional experiences, multilevel s
Title
Compensatory self-enhancement in the face of threats to self-worth
Author
Takuya TABATA and Tomoko IKEGAMI (Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences, Osaka City University)
Summary
The present research tests the hypothesis that if people face threats to self-worth in one domain, they will elevate their self-evaluation in another domain as compensation, and that this cross-domain compensation is more likely to occur among those with high relative to low trait self-esteem. Two studies were conducted with undergraduates using a reliving task to manipulate levels of threat to the self. Participants whose academic selves were threatened exhibited self-enhancement in the interpersonal domain regardless of the level of trait self-esteem (Study 1). However, participants whose social selves were threatened did not exhibit self-enhancement in the domain of intelligence regardless of the level of trait self-esteem (Study 2). Results are discussed in terms of the asymmetry in compensation between the intellectual and social domains.
Key words
compensation, ego threat, self-evaluation, trait self-esteem, state self-esteem