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Wishing for Change in Japan and Canada

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Abstract

Japanese and Canadian university students were compared on the changes they wanted in their lives. Contrary to their characterization as self-effacingly relational and group-minded, Japanese were no more likely than Canadians to wish for social or collective goods. Rather, Japanese were more likely than Canadians to wish for money or material goods, and less likely than Canadians to wish for better family relations, increased self-understanding, and improved academic performance. Whether these findings reflect dissimilar cultural priorities, unequal opportunities and constraints, or both, is discussed.

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Notes

  1. The original 10-point scale was collapsed at the high end (postgraduate education) to accommodate the dissimilar professional licensing requirements in Canada and Japan.

  2. There was evidence that six changes were enough to reflect the primary desires of participants. Supplementary investigation revealed that, on average, participants assigned 37% of the combined personal importance of the six changes to the one they judged as most important and only 7% to the one they judged as least important. Corresponding figures in the peer-reference condition were 33% and 7%. These numbers suggest that asking participants to report more than six changes would have generated many that were peripheral to their life concerns.

  3. Preliminary modeling confirmed that the covariates did not interact significantly with the main predictors (i.e., homogeneity of covariance) for any of the 27 categories.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Standard Research Grant (410-2006-1127) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the first author. We thank Glenn Davis for his assistance with coding.

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Correspondence to Romin W. Tafarodi.

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Tafarodi, R.W., Nishikawa, Y., Bonn, G. et al. Wishing for Change in Japan and Canada. J Happiness Stud 13, 969–983 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-011-9299-x

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