Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:22:58.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Cultural and Personality Determinants of Leniency in Self-Rating among Chinese People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Jia Lin Xie
Affiliation:
University of Toronto, Canada
Ziguang Chen
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Jean-Paul Roy
Affiliation:
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Abstract

This study examines how cultural values (i.e., individualism and collectivism) and personality (i.e., self-perceived superiority and exhibitionism) jointly affect self-rating among Chinese respondents from mainland China (N= 161), Hong Kong (N= 350), and Taiwan (N= 398). The results demonstrated that respondents with a more individualistic cultural orientation exhibit greater leniency in self-rating than those with a more collectivistic cultural orientation. Furthermore, self-perceived superiority and exhibitionism are related to high self-ratings among individuals who expressed low individualism values, but not among individuals who expressed high individualism or collectivism values. The results suggest that self-rating research needs to take both the individual's cultural values and personality traits into account.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International Association for Chinese Management Research 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aguinis, H. and Stone-Romero, E. F. (1997). ‘Methodological artifacts in moderated multiple regression and their effects on statistical power’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 192206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aiken, L. S. and West, S. G. (1991). Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Alderfer, C. P. (1986). ‘An intergroup perspective on group dynamics’. In Lorsch, J. (Ed.), Handbook of Organizational Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Alicke, M. D. (1985). ‘Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controllability of trait adjectives’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(5), 1621–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arbuckle, J. L. (2003). Amos™ 5.0. Chicago: Small Waters Corporation.Google Scholar
Atwater, L. E. and Yammarino, F. J. (1997). ‘Self-other rating agreement: A review and model’. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 15, 121-74.Google Scholar
Barbopoulos, A., Fisharah, E, Clark, J. M. and El-Khatib, A. (2002). ‘Comparison of Egyptian and Canadian children on a picture apperception test’. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 8(4), 395403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blalock, H. M. (1979). Social Statistics. NY: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Bors, D. A. and Stokes, T. L. (1998). ‘Raven's advanced progressive matrices: Norms for first year university students and the development of a short form’. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58(3), 382-98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brislin, R. (1980). ‘Translation and content analysis of oral and written material’. In Triandis, H. C. and Berry, J. W (Eds.), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 2. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, (pp. 389444).Google Scholar
Brockner, J. and Chen, Y. R. (1996). ‘The moderating roles of self-esteem and self-construal in reaction to a threat to the self: Evidence from the People's Republic of China and the United States’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(3), 603-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J. D. (2003). ‘The self-enhancement motive in collectivistic cultures: The rumors of my death have been gready exaggerated’. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(5), 603705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J. D. and Kobayashi, C. (2003). ‘Introduction: Culture and the self-enhancement bias’. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(5), 492-95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, D. and Lee, C. (1988). ‘Self-appraisal in performance evaluation: Development vs. evaluation’. Academy of Management Review, 13(2), 302-14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, C. C. (1995). ‘New trends in rewards allocation preferences: A Sino-U.S. comparison’. Academy of Management Journal, 38(2), 408-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Y. R., Brockner, J. and Chen, X. P. (2002). ‘Individual-collective primacy and ingroup favoritism: Enhancement and protection effects’. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 482-91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Y. R., Mannix, E. A. and Okumura, T. (2003). ‘The importance of who you meet: Effects of self-versus other concerns among negotiators in the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Japan’. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S. G. and Aiken, L. S. (2003). Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (3rd edn). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Earley, P. C. (1993). ‘East meets West meets Mideast: Further explorations of collectivistic and individualistic work groups’. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 319-48.Google Scholar
Earley, P. C. (1994). ‘Self or group? Cultural effects of training on self-efficacy and performance’. Administrative Science Quarterly, 39(1), 89117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earley, P. C. and Gibson, C. B. (1998). ‘Taking stock in our progress on individualism-collectivism: 100 years of solidarity and community’. Journal of Management, 24(3), 265304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Egri, C. P. and Ralston, D. A. (2004). ‘Generation cohorts and personal values: A comparison of China and the United States’. Organization Science, 15(2), 210-20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emmons, R. A. (1984). ‘Factor analysis and construct validity of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory’. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48(3), 291300.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Epstein, S. (1973). ‘The self-concept revisited: Or a theory of a theory’. American Psychologist, 28(5), 404-16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Erez, M. and Earley, P. C. (1993). Culture, Self-Identity, and Work. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farh, J. L. and Cheng, B. S. (1997). ‘Modesty bias in self-rating in Taiwan: Impact of item wording, modesty value, and self-esteem’. Chinese Journal of Psychology, 39, 103-18 (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Farh, J. L. and Dobbins, G. H. (1989). ‘Effects of self-esteem on leniency bias in self-reports of performance: A structural equation model analysis’. Personnel Psychology, 42, 835-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farh, J. L., Dobbins, G. H. and Cheng, B. S. (1991). ‘Cultural relativity in action: A comparison of self-ratings made by Chinese and U.S. Workers’. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 129-47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farh, J. L. and Werbel, J. D. (1986). ‘Effects of purpose of appraisal and expectation of validation on self-appraisal leniency’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71(3), 527-29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, S. (1914/1953). ‘On narcissism: An introduction’. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14. London: Hogarth, (pp. 69102).Google Scholar
Furnham, A. and Stringfield, P. (1993). ‘Personality and work performance: Myers-Briggs type indicator correlates of managerial performance in two cultures’. Personality and Individual Differences, 14(1), 145-53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabriel, M. T, Critelli, J. W. and Ee, J. S. (1994). ‘Narcissistic illusions in self-evaluations of intelligence and attractiveness’. Journal of Personality, 62(1), 143-56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodstein, L., Stringfield, P. and Zevulun, E. (1991). ‘Differences in self and other ratings between Chinese and Caucasian managers’. Paper presented at the Applied Psychology Conference, Tokyo, Japan.Google Scholar
Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R. and Kitayama, S. (1999). ‘Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?Psychological Review, 106, 766-94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. London: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
John, O. P. and Robins, R. W. (1994). ‘Accuracy and bias in self-perception: Individual differences in self-enhancement and the role of narcissism’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 206-19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johns, G. and Xie, J. L. (1998). ‘Perceptions of absence from work: People's Republic of China versus Canada’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(4), 515-30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kernberg, O. F. (1970). ‘Factors in the psychoanalytic treatment of narcissistic personalities’. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 18, 5185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kitayama, S. and Uchida, Y. (2003). ‘Explicit self-criticism and implicit self-regard: Evaluating self and friend in two cultures’. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 476-82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraiger, K. and Ford, J. K. (1990). ‘The relation of job knowledge, job performance, and supervisory ratings as a function of ratee race’. Human Performance, 3(4), 269-79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurman, J. and Sriram, N. (2002). ‘Interrelationships among vertical and horizontal collectivism, modesty, and self-enhancement’. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33, 7186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, L. A., Friedman, R. A. and Chi, S-C. (2005). ‘“Ren Qing” versus the “Big Five”: The role of culturally sensitive measures of individual difference in distributive negotiations’. Management and Organization Review, 1(2), 225-47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markus, H. R. and Kitayama, S. (1991). ‘Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation’. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224-53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markus, H. and Wurf, E. (1987). ‘The dynamic self-concept: A social psychological perspective’. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 299337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ng, K. Y. and Van Dyne, L. (2001). ‘Individualism-collectivism as a boundary condition for effectiveness of minority influence in decision making’. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 84(2), 198225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M. and Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). ‘Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumption and meta-analyses.Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Probst, T. M., Carnevale, P. J. and Triandis, H. C. (1999). ‘Cultural values in intergroup and single-group social dilemmas’. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 77(3), 171-91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ralston, D. A., Egri, C. P., Stewart, S., Terpstra, R. H. and Yu., K. C. (1999). ‘Doing business in the 21st century with the new generation of Chinese managers: A study of generational shifts in work values in China’. Journal of International Business Studies, 30(2), 415-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ralston, D. A., Pounder, J., Lo, C. W. H., Wong, Y, Egri, C. P and Stauffer, J. (2006). ‘Stability and change in managerial work values: A longitudinal study of China, Hong Kong, and the U.S.A.’. Management and Organization Review, 2(1), 6794.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ralston, D. A., Terpstra, R. H. and Yu, K. C. (1997). ‘The impact of national culture and economic ideology on managerial work values: A study of the United States, Russia, Japan, and China’. Journal of International Business Studies, 30(1), 177207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raskin, R. N. and Hall, C. S. (1979). ‘A Narcissistic Personality Inventory’. Psychological Reports, 45(1), 5560.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raskin, R. N. and Terry, H. (1988). A principal-components analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and further evidence of its construct validity’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5), 890902.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raven, J. C., Raven, J. and Court, J. H. (1991). Manual for Raven's Progressive Matrices and Vocabulary Scales (Section 1). Oxford, UK: Oxford Psychologist Press.Google Scholar
Rhodewalt, F. and Morf, C. C. (1995). ‘Self and interpersonal correlations of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory: A review and new findings’. Journal of Research in Personality, 29(1), 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robins, R. W. and Beer, J. (2001). ‘Positive illusion about the self: Short-term benefits and long-term costs’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 340-52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robins, R. W. and John, O. P. (1997). ‘Effects of visual perspective and narcissism on self-perception: Is seeing believing?Psychological Science, 8, 3742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roll, S. (1970). ‘Conservation of number: A comparison between cultures and subcultures’. Revista Interamericana de Psicologia, 4(1), 1318.Google Scholar
Schaubroeck, J., Lam, S. S. K. and Xie, J. L. (2000). ‘Collective efficacy versus self-efficacy in coping responses to stressors and control: A cross-cultural study’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(4), 512-25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Singelis, T. M., Triandis, H. C., Bhawuk, D. and Gelfand, M. L. (1995). ‘Horizontal and vertical dimensions of individualism and collectivism: A theoretical and measurement refinement’. Cross-Cultural Research, 29(3), 240-75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spector, P. E. and Jex, J. M. (1991). ‘Relations of job characteristics from multiple data sources with employee affect, absence, turnover intentions, and health’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(1), 4653.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.) (1994). Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Takata, T. (2003). ‘Self-enhancement and self-criticism in Japanese culture: An experimental analysis’. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(5), 542-51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tangney, J. P (2000). ‘Humility: Theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and directions for future research’. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19(1), 7082.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Triandis, H. C. (1990). ‘Cross-culture studies of individualism and collectivism’. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1989, in the Series on: Theory and Research in Motivation, 37, 41133.Google Scholar
Triandis, H. C. (1995). Individualism and Collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Triandis, H. C. (1996). ‘The psychological measurement of cultural syndromes’. American Psychologist, 51(4), 407-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Triandis, H. C. and Gelfand, M. (1998). ‘Converging measurement of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 118-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Triandis, H. C. and Suh, E. M. (2002). ‘Cultural influences on personality’. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 133-60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tsui, A. S., Schoonhoven, C. B., Meyer, M. W. Lau, C. M. and Milkovich, G. T. (2004). ‘Organization and management in the midst of societal transformation: The People's Republic of China’. Organization Science, 15(2), 133-44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xie, J. L. (1996). ‘Karasek's Model in the People's Republic of China: Effects of job demands, control, and individual differences’. Academy of Management Journal, 39(6), 15941618.Google Scholar
Yammarino, F. J. and Atwater, L. E. (1997). ‘Do managers see themselves as others see them? Implications of self-other rating agreement for human resources management’. Organizational Dynamics, 25(4), 3544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yik, M. S. M., Bond, M. H. and Paulhus, D. L. (1998). ‘Do Chinese self-enhance or self-efface: It's a matter of domain’. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 399412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, J. Y. and Murphy, K. R. (1993). ‘Modesty bias in self-ratings of performance: A test of the Cultural Relativity Hypothesis’. Personnel Psychology, 46(2), 357-63.Google Scholar