Individuality in Japan and the United States: A cross-cultural priming experiment

Japan may be faced with a cultural shift in values as a new generation replaces the aging baby boomer generation that is now leading the society. To demonstrate a temporary shift in values on an individual level, this paper reports on a study that uses a priming technique to shift the allocentrism of Japanese (and the idiocentrism of Americans for comparison). As a test of the hypotheses that idiocentrism (allocentrism) could be primed for those with a chronic allocentric (idiocentric) tendency, undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to one of two priming conditions in an experiment: uniqueness or similarity, or to the control condition (the weather). The manipulation was confirmed with the Twenty Statements Test (TST) and the outcome measure was a scenario measure of Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism (HVIC). Results revealed a significant Culture × Prime interaction effect for changes in vertical idiocentrism on the HVIC; implications are that younger generation Japanese will assert their individuality at appropriate times and in fact may not be more allocentric than Americans on measures that are not confounded by the so-called reference group effect. Implications for intercultural training are also discussed.