Participants completed four scales to assess their SWB. Second, the Interdependent Happiness Scale Hitokoto et al. Third, we assessed positive and negative affect. Positive affect was measured with 11 items e.
Fourth, we measured somatic symptoms 11 symptoms; e. All of these items have been successfully used in a survey of Midlife Development in the U. All of these scales had satisfactory internal consistency 0. The number of close friends was measured using a sociogram Kitayama et al. Participants were asked to draw circles representing themselves and their friends on a paper and to connect related persons with lines within 10 min.
After this was done, they were asked to identify the friends with whom they feel comfortable. The individualistic orientation score was significantly higher for the U. Raw scores of individualistic and collectivistic orientations in Japan and the U. Study 1. Bars represent the standard error. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine how individualistic and collectivistic orientations affected SWB in each culture 3.
In contrast, in the U. Standardized regression coefficients predicting subjective well-being in Japan and the U. We conducted a mediation analysis to test whether the number of close friends mediated the effect of an individualistic orientation on SWB.
The distributions of the numbers of close friends were positively skewed. Thus, we transformed the values by computing their common logarithm plus 1 , which produced an approximately normal distribution using the same analysis proposed by Kirkpatrick et al. In Japan, an individualistic orientation was associated with fewer close friends. Moreover, the number of close friends positively predicted SWB, even after orientation was controlled. In contrast, we did not find such a relationship in the U.
Mediation effect of the number of close friends between individualistic orientation and SWB in Japan and the U. Path coefficients on the left side of the arrows from individualistic orientation to SWB indicate standardized regression coefficients when individualistic orientation is a single independent variable. Those on the right side of the arrow indicate standardized regression coefficients when both individualistic orientation and the number of close friends are independent variables.
Gender and age were controlled. As predicted, in Japan an individualistic orientation was negatively related to SWB, but not in the U. In addition, in Japan, the number of close friends mediated the negative effect of an individualistic orientation on SWB. This suggests that if people in Japan try to be independent and achieve individualism, they will have difficulty forming and maintaining close friendships.
Interestingly, however, there was no relationship between an individualistic orientation and the number of close friends in the U. Therefore, we concluded that the effect of individualistic values differs between Japan and the U. Specifically, individualistic values in Japan were associated with a deterioration in close relationships and a decrease in SWB, whereas individualistic values in the U. Study 1 revealed that in the U.
However, these results might be questioned if the negative impact of individualistic orientation in Japan was due to the conflict between individualistic orientation in personal level and the collectivistic social structure.
Therefore, in Study 2, we chose a sample of women working in an individualistic-orientated workplace to examine whether negative impact of individualism found in Study 1 could be generalized to an individualistic-oriented working environment in Japan. We examined whether people with individualistic orientations working in an individualistic social structure would exhibit the same negative effects of individualism as exhibited by the Japanese participants in Study 1.
The data of two participants who reported they had lived abroad for more than 5 years were excluded. In this insurance company, performances and achievement-oriented goals are explicitly displayed on the wall e. Raw scores of individualistic and collectivistic orientations in adult samples and student samples in Japan. However, importantly, individualistic orientation had a negative relationship with both SWB and the number of close friends.
Effect of individualistic orientation on SWB and number of close friends in Japanese individualistic-oriented environment Study 2. Path coefficients on the left side of the arrow from individualistic orientation to SWB indicate standardized regression coefficients when individualistic orientation is a single independent variable. Age was controlled. We found that an individualistic orientation was negatively associated with the number of close friends and SWB even for women working in an individualistic-oriented workplace.
This result was the same as in the college sample in Study 1; however, we did not find a mediating relationship of close friends. One explanation for the lack of relationships between the number of close friends and SWB might lie in the sample; specifically, for the women working in an individualistic-oriented workplace, the achievement of individualistic goals required in the workplace may be more important to SWB than positive relationships with others.
The result suggested, however, that even in an achievement-oriented environment in Japan, achievement-oriented individuals feel lower SWB and have fewer close friends. Thus, it is indicated that Japanese with individualistic orientations have fewer close friends and feel lower SWB. We examined the effect of individualistic values on SWB in two studies. Study 1 demonstrated that an individualistic orientation was not associated with decreased SWB in the U.
Furthermore, Study 2 showed that an individualistic orientation was also associated with a decrease in the number of close friends and SWB for adult women working in an individualistic-oriented workplace. The results showed that an individualistic orientation dampened close interpersonal relationships and SWB in Japan, suggesting that individualism has a negative effect in East Asian cultural contexts. Although this study examined individualistic values in Japan, the results may generalize to other East Asian countries e.
Recently, Japanese systems and environments are becoming more individualistic, but people in Japan may not respond well to these new systems. To be more specific, when individuals in Japan try to be independent, they may cut off their existing relationships, and may not possess strategies to actively build new interpersonal relationships, unlike independent individuals in the European American cultural contexts where actively building new interpersonal relationships is common e.
In contrast, it is only recently that individualistic systems or environments have been drastically imported to East Asian cultural context. Therefore, these environments are comparatively new, and the Japanese imported individualism might consist only of parts of Western individualism.
For example, even though Japanese companies or schools use personal achievement systems, these systems are not backed by the personal values that govern these systems in European American cultural context, such as active interpersonal strategies, religious ideas, or high self-efficacy. Therefore, it remains difficult for East Asians to buffer the negative effects of individualistic systems or environment. The novelty of this study is that it separetes values and interpersonal strategies, especially as seen in the results of Study 2.
Although the Japanese might espouse individualistic values, they might not be able to achieve the same positive consequences of individualism that are observed in European American cultural contexts because they are not equipped with the strategies necessary to buffer the negative interpersonal effects of individualism. Although some researchers have theoretically distinguished social structure from values e.
Our findings reveal the simplicity of structure versus values distinction by highlighting the importance of the strategies that people use to act out their values. Transplanting both the structure and the values of one culture into another might not work if individuals do not have the strategies to adaptively act out their values in the given structural setting.
It is especially important to consider that the recent rapid changes of social structures and values may not be accompanied by behavioral strategies, which take longer to develop through many social training.
Although cross-cultural differences in social behavior are well established, much less is known about how cultural change influences individuals.
Further research should be conducted to examine the effect of cultural changes on human psychology and behavior. We explained that in individualistic cultures, such as American culture, people acquire strategies to deal with the negative interpersonal consequences of individualism through long-term socialization. By contrast, in Japan, it is comparatively recent that society has become individualistic and, even when people have individualistic values, they are not well equipped with appropriate strategies to buffer the negative effect of individualism.
In order to conclude which is the better explanation, it may be important to examine the buffering effect against individualism, such as by collecting data from people who appear to have better buffers against the negative effects of competitive working environments. We examined the relationships between an individualistic orientation, the number of close friends, and SWB in Japan and the U.
It is possible that having a small number of friends leading to individualism and lower SWB. Investigating the causal associations between an individualistic orientation, social relationships and SWB by longitudinal survey study or using the accumulated archive data could be a focus of future research.
All the enemies of American-European civilization in the last century - the communists, the Nazis, Imperial Japan, and extreme Islamic groups - have hated Western individualism with utter passion and conviction. But individualism has also been attacked by those within the West who have doubts about their own culture. Such critics single out individualism - with its attendant selfishness, alienation, and divisiveness - as the root cause of the problem. Psychologist Martin Seligman highlights a different problem with individualism.
Where can one now turn for identity, for purpose, and for hope? When we need spiritual furniture, we look around and see that all the comfortable leather sofas and stuffed chairs have been removed and all that's left to sit on is a small, frail folding chair: the self.
The self, he argues, sets itself up for an epidemic of depression: "The growth of the individual means that failure is probably my fault - because who else is there but me? The first is that whatever the downsides of individualism, there is vastly more to the credit side of its ledger than to the debit side. If you look at paintings before the Renaissance, only Jesus and perhaps the Virgin Mary and a few saints were painted as real people - everyone else was faceless or identical in appearance.
From the Renaissance onward, paintings began to be populated by real people, masses of them. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, for example, in The Peasant Wedding, depicts individual, identifiable people having fun.
Individualism actually derived from the Christian idea that God could live in individuals, and that each life was therefore precious. As Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor says, "we naturally think that we have selves the way we have heads or arms, and inner depths the way we have hearts or livers", but pre-Christian humanity did not have this sense at all. The origin of individuality was religious, and although often ignored or glossed over, in time the idea of human dignity adhering even to the lowest of the low, transformed society from a place of brutality to one in which the relief of suffering has assumed high priority.
The enemies of individualism, such as the communists and the Nazis, had the same view of the mass of humanity as the Romans had - fodder fit only for slavery, sexual and economic exploitation, torture, and execution on the slightest whim or pretext. Whether it was the poor, the Jews, women, homosexuals, or those who lived in other countries, little was expected from the masses and little was given to them.
The only bulwark against cruelty, indifference and callousness is individualism, the view that every person has a sacred soul and is in some vital sense the equal of everyone else. There is much wrong with Western society, but it is the most humane and most liberating that has ever existed - by a very wide margin.
The practical result of individualism has been the explosion of wealth that the world has seen since the eighteenth century. Before then, the great majority of people suffered malnutrition and disease, when they did not actually starve to death. Individualism has fuelled invention, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and all the enterprise that has led to cheap necessities and fairly cheap luxuries - decent clothes, affordable housing, abundant food, and the mobility brought by bicycles, cars, trains and planes.
None of this was possible before there was a cadre of highly creative inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and knowledge-workers, before people were allowed and encouraged to create, and allowed to keep some of the wealth that they generated.
So - it is all well and good to criticize individualism, but a look at the alternatives - ancient and modern - should persuade us that we should be more temperate in our criticism. My second contention is that individualism has been an enormous success in encouraging ordinary people to realize their potential and their inner depths.
Although the public acknowledges that natural, built, and social environments affect our health in profound ways, environmental health is often conflated with healthcare. This reduces appreciation and support for the work of organizations which ensure that our air, water, food, and buildings are free of contaminants that impact the health of entire communities.
The dominant narrative in America is that economic success and failure are tied to personal choice and determination. When thinking this way, people assume that the playing field is already level and that being poor is the result of bad choices.
This view reduces public support to address economic policies, legal systems, institutional racism, and other factors that contribute to economic inequality and health disparities. Food Systems. Diet is a leading contributor to chronic disease across the country, but the public still views this as an issue of personal choice rather than a public health problem. By viewing healthy food as a luxury consumer item rather than a human right, attempts to improve the food system are challenged by claims that the problem is a free market issue with no role for government or policy solutions.
Parks and Urban Nature. Experts understand that access to nature is a boon to public health because it increases opportunities to be physically active, improves air quality, and can reduce stress, among other benefits.
However, the public thinks about health outcomes primarily at the individual level. This means that people may not see a benefit to supporting parks for others in their community if that park is not close to them personally.
Even when it comes to race, the majority of Americans still do not see racism as a systemic or structural problem, but rather as something that lies within individual people. That view obstructs the implementation of effective reforms to address inequity.
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