The Universality Of Self-Enhancement:Approach-Avoidance Motivation And Information Processing

Self-enhancement researches were important topics of personal and social psychology. It is a tendency to evaluate the self more positively than others, and it is relevant with many psychological functions, such as mental health, social adaptation and school achievement. Sedikides, Gaertner, and Toguchi (2003) argued that self-enhancement does not vary across cultures but is universal. This is contrary to what has been argued elsewhere (e.g., Heine, Lehman,Markus,& Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto,&Norasakkunkit,1997). In their engaging and well-written article,Sedikides et al. maintained that people from all cultures self-enhance on dimensions that they consider to be personally important. In particular, cross-cultural research finds that East Asians evince far less motivation for self-enhancement than do Westerners. However, there are some researches find that the Western also have self-enhancement.One relevant process contributing to the cultural differences in self-enhancing motivations is approach-avoidance motivation. Approach motivation focuses on advancement, accomplishments, and aspirations; it involves a concern with the presence or absence of positive outcomes. In contrast, avoidance motivation focuses on safety, responsibilities, and obligations; it is concerned with the presence or absence of negative outcomesoApproach and avoidance motivations are not accessibility universals, or psychological processes that are accessible to the same extent across cultures (Norenzayan & Heine,2005), but are shaped considerably by cultural experiences. A growing corpus of cross-cultural research confinns that North Americans should be more attentive to approach-oriented information, they have self-enhancement, whereas East Asians should be more attentive to avoidance-oriented information, they have not self-enhancement。Heine (2009) have done three studies to investigate cultural differences of approach-avoidance motivation between Japanese and North American.this study found a predicted interaction between participants’cultural background and the framing of information. American participants who are predominately more approach focused exhibited better recall of approach-focused information relative to avoidance-focused information, whereas the pattern was the opposite among Japanese participants, and this pattern was not qualified by the overall valence of information.The current research doubts this conclusion, following Heine’s (2009) Reading-Recalling paradigm, in the context of Chinese culture, we got the materials from the Chinese college students, investigated what we experience more frequently is approach motivations or avoidance motivations.Study 1 and study 2 investigated the approach and avoidance motivation through the memory of daily life events(study 1) and the film reviews(study 2). Participants read the materials and got his own opinion, and then participants were asked unexpectedly to write down as many of the materials as they could. What we interested in is whether Chinese college students have more approach motivations than avoidance motivations, too. There are five categories of materials, the present or absence of positive outcomes (approach-oriented terms), the present or absence of negative outcomes (avoidance-oriented terms) and neural ones.Base on the study 1 and study2, in study3, we got the individual group and the collective group form Chinese people, and investigated the approach and avoidance motivation of the two groups.In study 1 & study 2, repeated measures analysis of variance, revealed a significant difference, F (1,97)=65.15, p＜..001(Study 1); F (1,97)=75.42, p＜..001 (study 2). When asked to recall information framed in either approach or avoidance terms, in both studies, participants recalled more approach terms than avoidance terms. In study3, both the individual group and the collective group recalled more approach terms than avoidance terms (F (1,54)=19.45, p＜.001 & F (1,75)=57.05, p<.001.).They both have self-enhancement.Unlike the conclusion of West researches, the Chinese have more approach motivations than avoidance motivations too, that is to say, they also have self-enhancement. Findings from the current research add to the growing literature of cross-cultural research on approach-avoidance motivations and provide more evidence for the self-enhancement of Chinese.