Motivation for Self-Enhancement and Self-Esteem

           When beginning the course I was very naive to different perspectives from different cultures. I looked at much of the material in a very ethnocentric way, especially when I came across the section on self-esteem. Why wouldn’t we see cross-culturally, self-esteem as a positive quality? The more I read the more my ethnocentric bias was being revealed. I have always been taught that its important to see your self positively and to do whatever it takes to make yourself appear high in self-esteem. I thought, that if this is what we strive for in North American, individualistic cultures, and that it’s not a cultural universal, than what do East Asian, collectivists, strive for?  What they strive for is something that doesn’t even properly translate into our English language. They strive for “face”, where we are so concerned with how we see ourselves; they are more concerned with how others view them.

            I began to realize just how important it is for us to maintain our level of self-esteem. Self-enhancement is very important to our culture, for example we tend to view successes as much more salient, and memorable than our failures. East Asians tend to view the failures as more memorable as they constantly think about them. While reflecting on these themes I saw examples of my own life that reflected these individualistic tendencies regularly, particularly during midterm season. We have many strategies to maintain our self-esteem and I can admit to using each one in the book on a subconscious level. Once midterms were just about done and marks started coming back I noticed I was doing well generally speaking, with the exception of a few classes. I began to apply all sorts of different techniques to reduce the responsibility from myself in order to feel better about my situation, and increase my self-esteem. I used downward comparisons, where I thought, “well even though its not as good as I wanted to do, there were many people who failed and well at least I was above the class average.” Not only did I use that strategy but I also attempted to discount the importance, “ah, well its just a midterm!” I even attempted to pass the blame by making an external attribution. I had the flu for a week before midterms began, so I even caught myself saying that my poor marks were due to being sick and unable to study.

            If I were a member of a collectivist culture, I would see this situation of a poor midterm grade in a much different way. Most likely I would not be likely to think, “ah, well its just a midterm!” I would view this midterm as more important that it actually was, I would not engage in downward social comparisons but rather engage in upward social comparisons. From the research it appears that East Asians like themselves just as much as Americans like themselves, but East Asians don’t feel the need to view them so positively, they are more critical of themselves.

            In being a good student I have always thought of myself as very critical of my failures, and that I take responsibility for my grades. After reading this section I can see that very often I engage in practices that reflect the individualistic cultures that I have the need to maintain high self-esteem. As many studies have made clear there is no black and white with cultural studies, but rather a heterogeneous mixture of traits that represent both individualistic and collectivist cultures.