Abstract
Cross-cultural psychology suggests that interpersonal harmony pursuit is more strongly related to health and well-being in interdependent cultures, but less is known about the effect of culture on motivation to pursue interpersonal harmony. Employing a mixed-method design, this study investigated how pursuit of interpersonal harmony emerges from Japanese (n = 154) and U.S. participants’ (n = 113) freely-listed personal goals and whether culture shapes motivation to pursue interpersonal harmony. Participants listed eight of their current strivings and evaluated their intrinsic, identified, introjected, and extrinsic reasons to pursue each goal. Results revealed that, compared to other types of goals, U.S. participants pursued interpersonal harmony goals for more intrinsic reasons, while Japanese pursued interpersonal harmony goals for more extrinsic reasons. Overall, this study reveals that culture shapes motivation to pursue interpersonal harmony and hints at the importance of distinguishing between different reasons for interpersonal harmony goal pursuit across cultures.
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Data for this article are available from the corresponding author upon request.
Notes
Note that our definition of interpersonal harmony goals is narrower than the definition of interpersonal goals in previous research: “interpersonal goals are defined as goals to attain, maintain, or avoid a specific end state for the partner or the relationship” (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003, p. 4). While interpersonal goals refer to any partner-related goals (including self-presentational and self-benefit goals; Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003), our definition of interpersonal harmony goals includes only goals that benefit the relationship and enhance harmony among the interactants.
Although our U.S. sample is ethnically diverse, we judged it to be representative of the U.S. culture. Past cultural psychology research indicates that ethnic minorities acculturate to the destination culture, becoming more and more similar to the host culture, and less similar to their home culture (for example, see Güngör et al., 2013).
Initial percent agreement between raters for the seven-category was 75.95%, while for the interpersonal harmony category, it was 91.25%. For each case on which raters disagreed, we conducted discussions and decided in which category the goal is to be finally categorized. For example, waking up early was initially categorized as either a health or a work-related goal. However, after discussions, we decided to categorize it as a health goal, because people may wake up early not only to work, but also for leisure-related activities (e.g., jogging).
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Gherghel, C., Akamatsu, D. Interpersonal harmony pursuit in Japan and the United States: Culture shapes motivation and goal content. Curr Psychol 42, 20474–20484 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03162-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03162-3