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- Due to economic structural changes in Japan, an increasing population of youth
- are “Not engaged in Employment, Education, or Training” (NEET). We argue that
- this state of anomie is associated with a lack of motivation in conforming to interdependent
- norms. To illustrate this type of “deviant” motivation, we conducted a
- study in which high- and low risk Japanese students were given either success or
- failure feedback upon completing a challenging task. Low risk Japanese students
- were more likely to persist on the challenging task upon being given negative
- feedback compared to being given positive feedback. This motivational pattern is
- consistent with that of the prototypical Japanese (Heine et al.). In contrast, the opposite
- pattern was found with high risk Japanese students. High risk students were
- also lower on levels of interdependence relative to low risk students according to
- both explicit and implicit measures of self-construal.
- This quote encapsulates what is well documented in the cultural psychological
- literature about Japanese society (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Namely, that
- Japanese society tends to be a seniority-based, interdependent society where one’s
- measure of success is largely determined by whether one has secured a permanent
- position in a large company like Sony. Doing so would allow individuals to reap
- the benefits of being associated with an elite organization and the stability of the
- network of tight social ties that the organization can offer (Nakane, 1970). In much
- of the industrialized world, globalization and digitalization have enabled possibilities
- for individuals to find alternative paths to success by capitalizing on their
- own idiosyncrasies that afford the emergence of innovative companies like Facebook
- and Google. Yet, in Japan, securing a permanent position in well-recognized,
- large companies like Sony still remains the socially sanctioned “legitimate” path
- to success. As Sir Howard Stringer implied, success in Japan is not only about
- making money but also about finding a secure workplace to be socially embedded
- in (see Brinton, 2011).
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