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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Oct 4.
Published in final edited form as: Mindfulness (N Y). 2018 Oct 29;10(5):854–862. doi: 10.1007/s12671-018-1045-6

Differences in Compassion, Well-being, and Social Anxiety between Japan and the USA

Kohki Arimitsu 1, Hidefumi Hitokoto 2, Shelley Kind 3, Stefan G Hofmann 4
PMCID: PMC6777568  NIHMSID: NIHMS1006507  PMID: 31588252

Abstract

Research has shown that self-compassion can improve individual well-being in many cultures; however, little research has examined cultural differences regarding compassion for others and individual well-being. Cross-cultural research has indicated that interdependent happiness and Taijin Kyofusho (TKS) (other-focused social anxiety) are aspects of well-being and psychopathology, respectively, related to interdependent (i.e., collectivistic) cultures such as Japan. First, we hypothesized that self-compassion would foster greater positive affect and satisfaction with life in the US than in Japan. Our second hypothesis was that the compassion for others would be association with greater interdependent happiness, and with less TKS symptoms in Japan than in the US. Through a web-based survey of Japanese and American adults, we found that self-compassion was related to positive and negative affect, SAD and TKS symptoms, and well-being in both countries. Compassion for others was found to be associated with increased positive affect and decreased TKS symptoms across both cultures. Simple slope tests revealed that self-compassion had a stronger relation with positive affect among U.S. adults than their Japanese counterparts, whereas compassion for others was related to interdependent happiness only in Japan. These findings suggest that the link between compassion, well-being, and psychopathology might be universal, although the effects of two types of compassion have different patterns between the two cultures.

Keywords: culture, compassion, affect, well-being, social anxiety, Taijin Kyofusho

Compassion for others is defined as the feeling that arises in witnessing another’s suffering and that motivates a subsequent desire to help (Goetz et al. 2010). Compassion is an emotion arising from and functioning to facilitate interpersonal relationships, which undoubtedly form the basis of our social and mental health. Researchers, however, have not yet clearly demonstrated a link from compassion for others to well-being and negative affect (Gilbert et al. 2011; Sprecher and Fehr 2005). Compassion for the self, or self-compassion (Neff 2003), is defined as a type of self-to-self relating that represents a compassionate rather than uncompassionate stance toward the self when faced with personal suffering. Meta-analyses have indicated that self-compassion is associated with greater positive affect and happiness and less negative affect, depression, and anxiety (MacBeth and Gumley 2012; Zessin et al. 2015). Because the way people manage and maintain interpersonal relationships is strongly dependent on cultural norms, there should be cultural differences in experiences of compassion and its relations with well-being and psychopathology.

There is one plausible factor for these cultural differences, which is the cultural self-construals. Markus and Kitayama (1991) suggest that people in the United States and other individualistic societies tend to have independent self-construals, or the tendency to view oneself and share an understanding of personhood as autonomous and separate from a social context. Within this social context, personal success contributes to well-being, because individuals with an independent self-construal tend to emphasize self-acceptance, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, and autonomy (Ryff and Keyes 1995). Thus, Americans might regain their positive feelings and lessen negative ones to a greater degree from self-compassion than might Japanese because self-compassion can relieve those who adhere to a cultural ideal of independence (Neff et al. 2008). In contrast, people in Japan and other East Asian countries tend to possess and share an interdependent self-construal, or an understanding of oneself as being intricately connected and integrated with others in a social group. Thus, maintaining good interpersonal relationships with close others should be considered important in interdependent (i.e., collectivistic) cultures and should contribute to higher positive emotion, self-esteem, and subjective well-being.

Furthermore, researchers have argued that self-criticism can be adaptive for those with an interdependent self-construal (Heine et al. 2001). Since Confucian cultures emphasize hierarchy and role mastery, self-critical thoughts and self-improving efforts enable Japanese or other Confucian to affirm their connection with others and enhance interdependence belongingness (Heine et al. 2001). In this cultural context, self-criticism and compassion for others are recognized as good virtues, whereas compassion for the self is not worthwhile. This notion has an evidence that Japanese individuals tend to have positive feelings of themselves while they are self-critical (Kitayama and Karasawa 1997). A cross-cultural study also revealed that Taiwan (an interdependent Confucian culture) had the lowest score of self-compassion among Thailand (an interdependent Buddhist culture) than the US (an independent culture), although Taiwanese had the robust relationship between self-compassion, life satisfaction, and depression (Neff et al. 2008). Although the cultural moderation was not investigated yet between Japan and the US, other research indicated self-construals moderate the effects of self-efficacy and relationship harmony on life satisfaction and depression (Smith et al. 2016). For example, the results showed that self-containment (vs. connection to others) moderated the effects of both predictors on depression, but not on life satisfaction. Other cross-cultural research has indicated that while self-compassion was associated with lower depressive symptoms in both the US and Japan, independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal had a stronger relationship with both comparative and internalized self-criticism in the US, and interdependent (vs. independent) self-construal had a stronger relationship with both types of self-criticism in Japan (Yamaguchi et al. 2014). These studies suggest that cultural differences in self-construals, especially Confucian self-critical attitude, may moderate the effects of compassion for the self and others on well-being.

In contrast to the number of cross-cultural findings on self-compassion, little has been revealed about cross-cultural variations in compassion for others. One study has reported that compassionate love for one’s partner was related to subjective well-being and positive affect in both the US and South Korea—in other words, across two societies with differing dominant cultural self-construals (Kim and Hatfield 2004). Furthermore, it is possible that people in an interdependent culture tend to feel happier caring about other members in the culture than those in an independent one. Because compassion for others can serve to provide social support and build one’s social bonds, it is likely to be related strongly with happiness in more interdependent cultures, where such relational tasks are the ultimate goal of life (Hitokoto and Uchida 2015). Interdependent happiness refers to “the global, subjective assessment of whether one is interpersonally harmonized with other people, being quiescent, and being ordinary, and connected to the collective way of well-being” (Hitokoto and Uchida 2015), which was found to explain more of the variance in subjective well-being in Japan than self-esteem. Similarly, relational well-being was found to be explained by conformity in Japan and by relatedness in Turkey, although personal well-being was explained only by autonomy in both cultures (Güngör et al. 2014). Taken together, these studies suggest that interpersonally engaged positive emotions (e.g., compassion for others) would strengthen interdependent or relational happiness to a greater degree than they would strengthen personal well-being in interdependent cultures but not in independent ones.

Culture and self-construals also should affect the relationship between compassion for others and negative emotions, which is especially socially engaged as social anxiety. Cross-cultural research indicates that social anxiety disorder (SAD) and its related symptoms were influenced by culture and self-construal (Hofmann et al. 2010). SAD is characterized by the belief that one displays physical defects or socially inappropriate behaviors, and the self-focused attention which increases access to negative thoughts and feelings about the self. Taijin Kyofusho (TKS) overlaps with SAD but has an additional other-focused cognition: the fear of offending others by self-perceived inappropriate behaviors (Nakamura et al. 2002). As East Asian cultures tend to be other-focused, TKS symptoms tends to be more prevalent among Japanese than North Americans (Dinnel et al. 2002; Norasakkunkit et al. 2012; Sato et al. 2014). Research in Western cultures has shown that higher self-compassion was associated with a lower fear of both negative and positive evaluations (Werner et al. 2012), and predicted less social avoidance on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (Gerber et al. 2015). Other research indicated that engaging in akind acts increased positive affect and reduced SAD symptoms (Alden and Trew 2013). These strands of evidence point to the fact that interpersonally engaged positive emotions (e.g., compassion for others) and greater positive emotion might serve as a buffer against the symptoms of SAD among those with the disorder. However, little is known about how cultural factors moderate the relationship between compassion and social anxiety. Considering the cultural tendencies of cognition toward self and others, we might expect that self-focused SAD symptoms are explained by self-focused compassion (self-compassion) particularly among members of independent cultures, whereas other-focused SAD symptoms (i.e., TKS symptoms) are associated with other-focused compassion (compassion for others) particularly among members of interdependent cultures.

The goal of the present study was to identify the possible relationship between compassion for the self and others and mental health in US and Japan. The first hypothesis was that self-compassion is more strongly associated with greater positive affect (Hypothesis 1a) and satisfaction with life (Hypothesis 1b) and less negative affect (Hypothesis 1c) and self-focused social anxiety (Hypothesis 1d) in the US than in Japan. The somewhat more challenging second hypothesis was that the compassion for others would have a stronger association with other-focused emotional well-being such as interdependent happiness (Hypothesis 2a), and with TKS symptoms (Hypothesis 2b) in Japan than in the US.

Method

Participants

We conducted two online surveys: one in Japan and one in the US. US participants were 258 adults (59% female; Mage = 37.25, SD = 13.69) who were born and had lived more than ten years in the US and were native English speakers. Japanese participants were 247 adults (55% female; Mage = 36.50, SD = 8.33), who were born and had lived more than ten years in Japan and were native Japanese speakers.

In terms of race/ethnicity, the American sample was mostly White/Caucasian (83%), followed by African American (6%), Hispanic (5%), Asian (2%), Native American (0.4%), and others (3.1%); the Japanese sample was all Asian (100%).

There were no significant differences in age or gender between the cultures, but the Americans had a greater proportion of full-time employment (54%) than did the Japanese (29%), χ2(4) = 46.89, p = .001. Household income was measured on an 8-point scale ranging from USD less than 30,000 to USD 100,000 and more in the US or from less than \200,000 to \10,000,000 and more in Japan. The most frequently selected answer for household income was “less than 30,000 dollars” among American participants (29%) and “from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 yen” among Japanese participants (27%). The cultural groups also differed significantly in terms of the highest education level achieved, χ2(3) = 58.32, p = .001, including high school or less (Japanese: 31%; Americans: 10%), some college (Japanese: 13%, Americans: 28%), 2- to 4-year university degree (Japanese: 51%; Americans: 45%), and graduate degree (Japanese: 5%; Americans: 16%). Marital status also exhibited significant differences between the two groups, χ2(5) = 17.66, p = .003, as follows: “single” (Japanese: 49%; Americans: 38%), “married” (Japanese: 40%; Americans: 37%), and “divorced” (Japanese: 5%; Americans: 11%).

Procedure

In each country, participants were recruited through a website that offers workers a small payment to complete small tasks over the Internet. Participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) in the US and Lancers, Inc. (http://www.lancers.jp) in Japan. American participants received $0.75 for completing this approximately 30-minute-long survey, whereas those in Japan received ¥200. The amount of both rewards was considered suitable for a survey of this length based on the average rate on the respective survey sites. This rate should not significantly affect score reliability, since research has shown that the length of the survey and the payment rate have no effects on reliability (Buhrmester et al. 2011).

Measures

Self-compassion.

The Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) is a 26-item measure (e.g., “I’m kind to myself when I’m experiencing suffering”) to assess self-compassion (Neff 2003). It comprises six subscales: self-kindness, self-judgment, awareness of common humanity, isolation, mindfulness, and over-identification. Participants rated each item on a 5-point scale (1 = almost never to 5 = almost always), and total self-compassion score was computed by reversing the negative subscale scores (self-judgment, isolation, and over-identification). Both the English and Japanese versions of the SCS (Arimitsu 2014) had good reliability in the current sample (Cronbach’s α = .95 for Americans, α = .90 for Japanese).

Compassion for others.

Participants completed a measure of compassion for others, a subscale of the Differential Positive Emotions Scale (DPES; Shiota et al. 2006). The subscale contains five items, such as “When I see someone hurt or in need, I feel a powerful urge to take care of them,” or “Taking care of others gives me a warm feeling inside.” All items were rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The compassion subscales of the English and Japanese versions of the DPES (Sugawara et al. 2017) had good reliability in the current sample (Cronbach’s α = .93 for Americans, α = .83 for Japanese).

Social anxiety.

The Social Anxiety Questionnaire for adults (SAQ; Caballo et al. 2012) was a measure to assess social anxiety symptoms (e.g., “Greeting someone and being ignored”). All items were measured by a 5-point scale (1 = not at all or very slight to 5 = very high or extremely high). The Japanese version of the SAQ was developed by Arimitsu, Hitokoto, Kind, and Hofmann (2016). The scales demonstrated good reliability in the current sample (Cronbach’s α = .96 for Americans, α = .94 for Japanese).

Taijin kyofusho.

The TKS Scale (TKSS; Kleinknecht et al. 1997) is a 31-item measure rated on a 7-point scale (1 = totally false to 7 = very high or extremely high) used to assess symptoms of TKS (e.g., “I am afraid that I may unintentionally hurt others’ feelings”). We used both the English and Japanese versions, which demonstrated good reliability in the current sample (Cronbach’s α = .93 for Americans, α = .97 for Japanese).

Affect.

Positive and negative affect were assessed using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS: Watson et al. 1988), a 20-item questionnaire rated on a 5-point scale (1 = very slightly or not at all to 5 = extremely). In addition to the English version, we used the Japanese version of the PANAS developed by Kawahito et al. (2011). Both of the subscales—positive affect (e.g., “excited”, Cronbach’s α = .93 for Americans, α = .84 for Japanese) and negative affect (e.g., “afraid”, Cronbach’s α = .93 for Americans, α = .89 for Japanese)—demonstrated good internal consistency in the current sample.

Subjective well-being.

Participants completed the five items of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS: Diener et al. 1985) to assess subjective well-being (e. g. “I am satisfied with my life”). Participants rated each item on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Both the English and Japanese versions demonstrated good reliability in the current sample (Cronbach’s α = .92 for Americans, α = .90 for Japanese). Participants also completed the nine-item Interdependent Happiness Scale (IHS: Hitokoto and Uchida 2015), which assesses happiness in terms of interpersonal harmony, quiescence, and ordinariness. Examples of the items are “I believe that I and those around me are happy” and “I feel that I am being positively evaluated by others around me”. The items were rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Again, both the English and Japanese versions demonstrated good reliability in the current sample (Cronbach’s α = .92 for Americans, α = .93 for Japanese).

Data Analysis

We conducted a series of hierarchical regression analyses to examine whether culture and compassion for the self and others predicted positive and negative affect, subjective well-being, and/or social anxiety. The first series revealed the moderation effects of country and two types of compassion on positive and negative affect. The second series examined the moderation effects of country and two types of compassion on life satisfaction, interdependent happiness, social anxiety, and TKS symptoms.

In the first steps of all the analyses, we entered control variables to partial out the variance that each shared with the dependent variables. For example, negative affect was entered in Step 1 because it shared some variance with positive affect. In the second series of analyses, we included positive and negative affect as control variables because affect would be predictors for mental health measures (Hofmann et al. 2012). In the second and third steps, country and two types of compassion were entered to partial out the variance that each single variable had before examining the interactions. Country was dummy coded as 0 = Japan and 1 = the US. We centered the scores for both types of compassion and computing the Country × Compassion interaction terms (Aiken and West 1991). When decomposing each interaction effect, we tested the simple slope for culture within each dependent variable. We standardized the predictor variables (M = 0, SD = 1) before computing. Analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics 20 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY).

Results

The intercorrelations among the variables of interest are presented in Table 1. Pearson’s product-moment correlations revealed that scores on the self-compassion and compassion for others measures were both positively associated with positive affect, SWLS, and IHS scores in both countries. Although self-compassion was significantly and negatively correlated with negative affect, SAD, and TKS symptoms, compassion for others had relatively weak negative or non-significant correlations with those variables.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Zero-Order Correlationsa Among the Variables

US
 JPN
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 M SD M SD
1 SCS .21** .55** −.54** .51** .55** −.53** −.47** 17.99 5.24 15.95 3.45
2 COM .14** .29** −.19** .16* .16* −.12* −.28** 26.24 5.76 21.54 5.80
3 POS .19** .30** −.35** .50** .53** −.31** −.33** 30.67 9.09 24.43 7.35
4 NE −.39** .04 .22** −.45** −.54** .47** .59** 19.39 8.78 25.17 8.72
5 SWLS .49** .26** .23** −.32** .83** −.29** −.27** 21.54 7.73 15.62 7.42
6 IHS .50** .39** .29** −.35** .74** −.36** −.41** 30.81 8.37 25.07 8.41
7 SAQ −.35** −.06 −.04 .30** −.35** −.30** .62** 94.07 25.14 102.23 19.69
8 TKSS −.38** −.15** −.08 .43** −.44** −.49** .54** 87.28 44.43 106.35 38.02
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Note. N = 258 in the United States and 248 in Japan. US, the United States; JPN, Japan; SCS, Self-Compassion Scale; COM, the compassion subscale of Differential Positive Emotions Scale; POS, positive affect; NE, negative affect; SWLS, Satisfaction With Life Scale; IHS, Interdependent Happiness Scale; SAQ, Social Anxiety Questionnaire; TKSS, Taijin Kyofusho Scale; M, mean; SD, standard deviation.

*

p < .05

**

p < .01

a

Correlations for the US sample are above the diagonal and those for the Japanese sample are below the diagonal.

To test our hypothesis, we conducted hierarchical regression analyses (Table 2 and Table 3). Consistent with our Hypothesis 1a, the Country × Self-compassion interaction term was also significant in positive affect, which indicated that the effect of self-compassion on positive affect differed by country. To confirm this difference, we conducted a simple slope test for the association between self-compassion and positive affect in both countries. The simple slope tests revealed a significant positive association between self-compassion and positive affect in both countries, but self-compassion had a stronger relationship to positive affect in the US (B = .98, SEb = .09, β = .50, p < .001, sr2 = .25) than in Japan (B = .45, SEb = .14, β = .23, p < .001, sr2 = .05). Figure 1 plots the simple slopes for this interaction. The simple slopes in the figure are printed at 1 SD above/below the mean of positive affect.

Table 2.

Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses Testing the Moderating Effects of Compassion For the Self and Others on the Relationships between Country and Positive and Negative Affect

95%CI
Step Variable ΔR2 ΔF df p value B SE β t p value Lower Upper
Positive affect
1 Negative affect 0.04 20.91 1/503 0.001 −0.19 0.04 −0.20 −4.57 0.001 −0.27 −0.11
2 Country 0.09 54.06 1/502 0.001 5.69 0.77 0.32 7.35 0.001 4.17 7.21
3 SC 0.20 76.50 2/500 0.001 0.82 0.08 0.42 9.88 0.001 0.66 0.99
COM 0.32 0.06 0.23 5.68 0.001 0.21 0.43
4 Country ×SC 0.01 5.63 2/498 0.004 0.27 0.08 0.13 3.34 0.001 0.11 0.42
Country ×COM −0.02 0.06 −0.01 −0.31 0.760 −0.13 0.09
Negative affect
1 Positive affect 0.04 20.91 1/503 0.001 −0.21 0.05 −0.20 −4.57 0.001 −0.30 −0.12
2 Country 0.07 38.02 1/502 0.001 −5.11 0.83 −0.28 −6.17 0.001 −6.74 −3.48
3 SC 0.20 73.16 2/500 0.001 −1.02 0.09 −0.51 −12.03 0.001 −1.19 −0.86
COM −0.03 0.06 −0.02 −0.44 0.660 −0.15 0.09
4 Country ×SC 0.01 2.27 2/498 0.104 0.04 0.09 0.02 0.41 0.685 −0.13 0.20
Country ×COM −0.13 0.06 −0.08 −2.13 0.034 −0.25 −0.01
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Note. N = 258 in the United States and 248 in Japan, SE, standard error; CI, confidence interval; SCS, Self-Compassion Scale; COM, the Compassion subscale of Differential Positive Emotions Scale. Culture was dummy coded as 0 = Japan and 1 = the United States.

Table 3.

Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses Testing the Moderating Effects of Compassion For the Self and Others on the Relationships between Country and Social Anxiety Symptoms

95%CI
Step Variable ΔR2 ΔF df p value B SE β t p value Lower Upper
Social anxiety
1 Taijin kyofusho 0.39 104.58 3/501 0.001 0.28 0.02 0.51 11.98 0.001 0.23 0.32
Positive affect −0.21 0.10 −0.08 −2.22 0.027 −0.40 −0.02
Negative affect 0.31 0.10 0.12 2.94 0.003 0.10 0.51
2 Country 0.00 0.03 1/500 0.863 0.31 1.79 0.01 0.17 0.863 −3.20 3.82
3 SC 0.04 18.39 2/498 0.001 −1.31 0.22 −0.26 −5.87 0.001 −1.75 −0.87
COM 0.23 0.14 0.06 1.63 0.104 −0.05 0.51
4 Country ×SC 0.00 1.79 2/496 0.168 −0.36 0.20 −0.07 −1.81 0.072 −0.74 0.03
Country ×COM 0.12 0.14 0.03 0.86 0.388 −0.15 0.39
Taijin kyofusho
1 Social anxiety 0.48 156.31 3/501 0.001 0.80 0.07 0.43 11.98 0.001 0.67 0.93
Positive affect −0.54 0.16 −0.11 −3.35 0.001 −0.85 −0.22
Negative affect 1.59 0.16 0.34 9.65 0.001 1.26 1.91
2 Country 0.00 0.00 1/500 0.988 −0.05 3.02 0.00 −0.02 0.988 −5.99 5.89
3 SC 0.02 7.73 2/498 0.001 −0.35 0.40 −0.04 −0.89 0.375 −1.14 0.43
COM −0.93 0.24 −0.14 −3.79 0.001 −1.41 −0.45
4 Country ×SC 0.00 1.02 2/496 0.360 0.41 0.34 0.04 1.21 0.225 −0.26 1.09
Country ×COM −0.23 0.24 −0.03 −0.95 0.341 −0.70 0.24
Life satisfaction
1 Interdependent happiness 0.66 326.41 3/501 0.001 0.67 0.03 0.73 21.45 0.001 0.61 0.73
Positive affect 0.08 0.03 0.09 2.99 0.003 0.03 0.14
Negative affect −0.06 0.03 −0.07 −2.31 0.021 −0.11 −0.01
2 Country 0.01 10.34 1/500 0.001 1.50 0.47 0.09 3.22 0.001 0.58 2.41
3 SC 0.00 3.68 2/498 0.026 0.16 0.06 0.09 2.65 0.008 0.04 0.28
COM −0.02 0.04 −0.02 −0.62 0.539 −0.10 0.05
4 Country ×SC 0.00 1.19 2/496 0.305 −0.06 0.05 −0.03 −1.18 0.240 −0.17 0.04
Country ×COM 0.04 0.04 0.03 1.15 0.249 −0.03 0.12
Interdependent happiness
1 Life satisfaction 0.69 380.11 3/501 0.001 0.72 0.03 0.66 21.45 0.001 0.65 0.78
Positive affect 0.15 0.03 0.15 5.50 0.001 0.10 0.21
Negative affect −0.17 0.03 −0.18 −6.34 0.001 −0.22 −0.12
2 Country 0.00 1.19 1/500 0.276 −0.53 0.49 −0.03 −1.09 0.276 −1.50 0.43
3 SC 0.01 8.06 2/498 0.001 0.16 0.06 0.08 2.46 0.014 0.03 0.28
COM 0.12 0.04 0.09 3.11 0.002 0.04 0.20
4 Country ×SC 0.01 11.25 2/496 0.001 −0.06 0.05 −0.03 −1.07 0.284 −0.16 0.05
Country ×COM −0.17 0.04 −0.11 −4.39 0.001 −0.24 −0.09
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Note. N = 258 in the United States and 248 in Japan. SE, standard error; CI, confidence interval; SCS, Self-Compassion Scale; COM, the compassion subscale of Differential Positive Emotions Scale; Life satisfaction, Satisfaction With Life Scale; Interdependent Happiness, Interdependent Happiness Scale; Social Anxiety, Social Anxiety Questionnaire; Taijin Kyofusho, Taijin Kyofusho Scale. Culture was dummy coded as 0 = Japan and 1 = the United States.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Positive affect as a function of self-compassion and culture. US, the United States, JPN, Japan, SD, standard deviation.

Inconsistent with our Hypotheses 1b, 1c, 1d, there was no significant the Country × Self-Compassion interaction in negative affect, social anxiety, and life satisfaction. Although the change in R2 was not significant, the Country × Compassion for others interaction was significant in negative affect. We conducted a simple slope test to determine the association between compassion and negative affect among Japanese and American participants; however, there was no significant difference in the relation between compassion for others and negative affect between the countries.

Next, we conducted hierarchical regression analyses to investigate whether country moderated the associations between compassion for others and interdependent types of happiness and social anxiety. Consistent with our Hypothesis 2b, the Country × Compassion for Others interaction was also significant in interdependent happiness, suggesting that the relation between compassion for others and interdependent happiness depended on the country. A simple slope test to determine the difference in associations between compassion and IHS scores between the countries (plotted in Figure 2) indicated that this association was significant in Japan (B = .30, SEb = .05, β = .21, p = .001, sr2 = .04) but not in the US (B = −.05, SEb = .05, β = −.03, p = .38, sr2 = .00). The simple slopes in the figure are printed at 1 SD above/below the mean of interdependent happiness. There was, however, no other significant interaction term, which were inconsistent with our Hypothesis 2a.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

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Interdependent happiness as a function of compassion for others and culture. US, the United States, JPN, Japan, SD, standard deviation.

Discussion

The present study was conducted to test two hypotheses. The first hypothesis was that culture moderated the relationship between self-compassion and positive affect, life satisfaction, negative affect, and social anxiety. Consistent with the hypothesis, we found an interaction effect that self-compassion had a stronger association with positive affect in the US than in Japan. The second hypothesis was that the relationship between compassion for others and interdependent happiness and TKS symptoms was moderated by culture. The results support the hypothesis that compared to self-compassion, compassion for others was associated with interdependent happiness only in Japan.

Self-compassion had a stronger effect on positive affect in the US than in Japan. This finding adds partial support for our Hypothesis 1a: namely, that self-focused compassion fosters more positive emotion in independent cultures than in interdependent cultures. As hypothesized, self-compassion is likely to increase more positive affect because of the need for positive self-regard in American culture (Neff et al. 2008). It should be noted that although American participants showed higher level of life satisfaction and positive affect than Japanese, there was no cultural moderation between compassion for the self and others and life satisfaction. Life satisfaction is cognitive and judgmental aspect of subjective well-being whereas positive and negative affect are emotional one (Diener et al. 1999). Taken together, these results suggest that the cultures (American vs Japanese) moderated the effects of self-compassion on positive emotional component of subjective well-being, but not on cognitive component. It is possible that because people in interdependent culture tend to criticize themselves and feel more negative affect in success and failure, the effect of self-compassion on positive affect could be attenuated. Self-compassion, however, has cognitively accepting and soothing effect, which was not attenuated by the cultural demand (Arimitsu and Hofmann 2017) and could lead interdependent people satisfy their life.

We also found supportive evidence for our Hypothesis 2b: namely, compassion for others is positively related with interdependent happiness only in Japan. This finding suggests that compassion for others helps interdependent individuals feel happy within a group because it keeps them more harmonized and maintains their interdependent cultural self-construal. Although the effects compassion for others on well-being were unclear across cultures, the results presented the first evidence that compassion for others may facilitate social relations and well-being more functionally in the Japan than the US. The results replicated the previous findings indicating an association between self-compassion, positive and negative affect, satisfaction with life, and SAD symptoms (Neff 2003; Neff and Vonk 2009; Werner et al. 2012). However, contrary to our Hypotheses 1b, 1c, and 1d, we found no evidence here for cultural moderation in the associations between self-compassion, life satisfaction, negative affect, and SAD. Although there was no cultural moderation, the results showed that self-focused mental health measures would be explained by self-compassion rather than compassion for others across cultures. The results were partially consistent with our hypothesis that the self-focused measures would be related to self-compassion rather than compassion for others. Future studies should examine that compassion for the self and others would have the different manner to foster or dampen well-being across cultures.

The finding that compassion for others was associated with decreased other-focused social anxiety (taijin kyofusho) across both cultures were inconsistent with our Hypothesis 2a. The result also partially consistent with our hypothesis that the other-focused variables would be related to compassion for others rather than self-compassion. It is suggested that compassion for others would lead to altruistic behaviors and decrease TKS symptoms, although self-compassion had no link to other-focused behavior in the present study. Future studies including other-focused behaviors could reveal how compassion for the self and others affect TKS symptoms.

There are several possible explanations for the lack of hypothesized relationship in this study. First, it is possible that the cultural moderation would be found if more self- or other-focused measures were administered. For example, the degree of self-focused attention or negative self-perception could be measured, as it is known to be a factor maintaining SAD (Hofmann 2007). Second, because the present study was the first to investigate the above cultural differences while allowing the researchers to control for IHS and TKS, we might argue that previous studies obscured the true associations among the variables. In other words, it is plausible that compassion for self and others were associated with each mental health measure, because the SWLS and IHS (as well as SAQ and TKSS) are highly correlated across cultures.

Strengths and Limitations

We have provided the first empirical evidence of cross-cultural differences in the associations between compassion for the self and others, affect, well-being, and social anxiety. Self-focused compassion is more associated with positive affect in US than in Japan, while other-focused compassion is associated with interdependent happiness only in Japan. Our findings also show that interdependent happiness is one of the most important cultural factors explaining compassion and social anxiety in the interdependent culture of Japan. Because most previous studies have focused on self-compassion and self-focused well-being, our study emphasizes the importance of further exploring the effects of compassion for others on cultural happiness in future research. Although the present study revealed the cultural moderations in compassion, it simultaneously showed the consistent with some previous studies (Neff 2003; Neff and Vonk 2009; Neff et al. 2008; MacBeth and Gumley 2012; Muris and Petrocchi 2015; Werner et al. 2012; Zessin et al. 2015). These results suggest that compassion for the self and others may have power to improve well-being universally.

Our study has some limitations that should be mentioned. First, our evidence was obtained from two countries that in theory diverge in their predominant shared self-construal. We further interpreted our results based on the assumption that the US and Japan were examples of independent and interdependent cultures, respectively. The obvious advantage of using Americans and Japanese is that the previous findings we introduced were predominantly gleaned in the US, sampling individuals of different cultures can offer entirely different results—such as our findings on the lack of a link between self-compassion and positive affect, or the positive association between compassion for others and interdependent happiness. Previous studies in different countries showed interaction effects between culture and life satisfaction (Smith et al. 2016), which were inconsistent with the present study. Simultaneously, however, the problem inherent in this approach is that without reliable measurement of the shared understandings of the self among the members of both cultures, any difference is merely an interpretation at the country level that will never be entirely free from alternative explanations at the individual level. Still, recent studies have suggested that traditional subjective measures of individual-level constructs (i.e., participants’ self-construal) might hinder the true effect of culture present at the country level (Na et al. 2010); thus, our theoretical choice of these two cultural groups provides the first step in examining the value of two types of compassion for mental health. The most fruitful suggestion we can offer for future studies is to replicate our results in other cultures that are either more or less interdependent. Second, we recruited participants from Internet services. Although many psychological studies have used this population, some selection biases might have affected to the results. Third, we used only trait measures. Since previous studies have shown that self-compassion was associated with less negative emotions at both the state and trait levels (Arimitsu and Hofmann 2017), future research might examine the state-level effects of compassion for others on negative emotions and social anxiety. Fourth, the Buddhist tradition claims that compassion for all being is characterize as a mental capacity that empowers all positive states of mind as we awaken to our fullest potential (Makransky, 2012). When we have an assessment tool adhering to the religious discipline, the power of compassion would be proved as universal.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), awarded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) (Numbers 25380944 and 17K04453) and a Special Research Program of Komazawa University 2016 to the first author. Dr. Hofmann receives financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (as part of the Humboldt Prize), NIH/NCCIH (R01AT007257), NIH/NIMH (R01MH099021, U01MH108168), and the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative in Understanding Human Cognition – Special Initiative. He receives compensation for his work as editor from SpringerNature and the Association for Psychological Science, and as an advisor from the Palo Alto Health Sciences and for his work as a Subject Matter Expert from John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and SilverCloud Health, Inc. He also receives royalties and payments for his editorial work from various publishers

Footnotes

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval: All procedures performed in the present study were approved by the ethical committee of Boston University.

Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Contributor Information

Kohki Arimitsu, Department of Psychological Sciences, Kwansei Gakuin University, Hyogo, Japan.

Hidefumi Hitokoto, Department of Culture, Fukuoka University, Fukuoka, Japan.

Shelley Kind, Suffolk University, Boston, USA.

Stefan G. Hofmann, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

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