PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Cultural Variations on Optimistic and Pessimistic Bias for Self Versus a Sibling: Is There Evidence for Self-Enhancement in the West and for Self-Criticism in the East When the Referent Group Is Specified?

A culturally relevant framework was used to examine variations on optimistic and pessimistic bias in Westerners and Easterners. Study 1 showed that 136 European Americans compared with 159 Japanese were more likely to predict typical positive events to occur to self than to a sibling. The opposite pattern emerged in the prediction of typical negative events. Study 2 replicated these findings on the basis of predictions for atypical events in 175 European Americans and 130 Japanese. Across both studies, within-groups analyses indicated that European Americans held an optimistic bias in the prediction of positive and negative events, whereas Japanese held a pessimistic bias for negative events. These findings are taken to offer support for presumed cultural differences in self-enhancement and self-criticism between Westerners and Easterners, respectively. Western thinkers have long argued that human beings are not merely what they are (actuality), but are more importantly what they are not yet but can be (potentiality). As cognitive beings (Descartes, 1641/1986), whether defined by Heidegger’s (1927/ 1962) notion of dasein [“being-there”], by Sartre’s (1943/1956) notion of l’être-pour-soi [“being-for-itself”], or by Rogers’s (1961) notion of “becoming, ” we find meaning in considering future possibilities (Heidegger, 1927/1962), including possibilities that good things will happen [bonum futurum] and possibilities that bad things will happen [malum futurum], or in more lay terms, optimism and pessimism. It is therefore not surprising that across more than half a century, researchers have been interested in studying the constructs of optimism and pessimism (e.g., Dember