Flow is described as a state in which people become so involved or engrossed in an activity that nothing else seems to matter (Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). This state of consciousness seems to occur when a person is involved in a task and seemingly unable to stop. Flow states are marked by (a) a perceived balance of skills and challenge, (b)…

It is widely accepted that Japanese, compared to Americans, commit fewer criminal and other forms of deviant acts. However, there is evidence that Japanese students have an unusually high prevalence of bullying. In the current study, we develop a rationale for predicting that Japanese students, relative to Americans, should be oriented more…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify the aspects of the Theory of Planned Behavior with the greatest relevance to plate waste (PW) among elementary school children in Tokyo, Japan. Methods: A total of 111 fifth- and sixth-grade students at an elementary school in Tokyo, Japan responded to a self-report questionnaire. The…

Objective: Health locus of control (HLC) is associated with health behaviours. We aimed to investigate the difference of HLC to understand the potential gap in health beliefs between physicians and the general public. Design and setting: Physicians and the general public were surveyed in Japan using a cross-sectional survey. Data on the Japanese…

Social scientists have only recently begun to explore students' conceptions of their world and the relationship of these conceptions to their success in school. In particular, investigators have found that students who perceive themselves to be more in control of their environment are more successful in school than are students who feel less in…

The purpose of this study was to expand the previous limited locus of control focus of gender differences cross-nationally by shifting to an attributional model for both successes and failures in both achievement and affiliation domains in order to test the hypothesis that women differ from men in their attributional patterns for achievement and…

Comments on the preceding discussion of locus of control in Japanese and American cultures (Weisz et al.). Discusses yielding, as one of many coping styles, to demonstrate the heterogeneity of secondary control. Asserts that dichotomizing secondary and primary control, rather than seeking differentiation within a single category, itself reflects a…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between approaches to learning and locus of control of students from the USA, Japan, and Taiwan. The results show that students from the USA utilized more rote memory learning compared to students from Japan and Taiwan, while students from Japan were more likely to be "Achieving"…

Comments on a preceding discussion of control in Japanese and American cultures by Weisz et al. Discusses forms and modes of control, the context-boundedness of interpersonal relations, and concept of self in Japan. (KH)

Student self-beliefs are significantly related to several types of academic achievement. In addition, results from international assessments have indicated that students in Japan have typically scored above international averages (D. L. Kelly, I. V. S. Mullis, & M. O. Martin, 2000). In this study, the author examined relationships between…

This study examined four causal attributions (ability, effort, task difficulty and luck) for success and failure in achievement and affiliation contexts across five countries (U.S., South Africa, Japan, India, and Yugoslavia) in three subject majors: teacher training, social science, and science. Each 5x2x3x2 analysis of variance assessed the…

Four sources of efficacy (achievement, modeling, verbal encouragement, and emotional response) with regard to high school math, locus of control, and math self-efficacy were assessed for 97 male and 66 female Japanese undergraduates. Men reported significantly higher math self-efficacy. Of the four sources, only verbal persuasion did not make a…

Explores the attributional orientation of underachieving students in three countries (Japan, China, and the United States). Responses from 738 students reveal that Asian students perceived controllable causes, particularly effort, to play a greater role in performance outcomes than did their American peers. Implications are discussed regarding the…

Cultural expectations provide meaning to human perceptions of who-does-what-to-whom-where. However, the effects of actions directed at oneself have been much less systematically studied. This article replicates the American factorial design of Britt and Heise (1992) in a Japanese setting. The analysis demonstrates both cultural similarities and…

Individuals gain feelings of control either by influencing existing realities (primary control) or by accommodating to existing realities (secondary control). Comparisons of American culture (which encourages primary control) and Japanese culture (which encourages secondary control) suggest that, ideally, individuals and cultures should blend both…