[burkaman]

You're saying Americans are the only people in the world who care about themselves? Other countries are full of purely rational actors who attach no emotional value to their own abilities? Have you ever met a real person outside of America?

[sklogic]

> You're saying Americans are the only people in the world who care about themselves?

No, I'm saying that only Americans are so conditioned to value their "self esteem". There is no emphasis on this stupidity in the other cultures.

It's all about the emphasis: http://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/articles/Cai%20et%20al.%20...

[burkaman]

Ok, only Americans have over-inflated self esteem, that's a different statement. Still wrong, but at least it's a common stereotype.

And I don't think that study supports your comment at all.

> Supporting this contention, our Chinese participants reported liking themselves every bit as much as our European American participants.

> This finding supports our claim that cultural differences in self-esteem arise from cultural differences in self-evaluations, with people from East Asian countries evaluating themselves less positively than people from Western countries.

> Thus, even though cognitive self-evaluations are lower in China than in America, they are not less predictive of global self-esteem. This finding suggests that global self-esteem is experienced similarly across dissimilar cultures

This study finds that self esteem is equally prevalent across the two cultures, and as far as I can see says nothing about how much the participants value their self esteem.

[sklogic]

> Ok, only Americans have over-inflated self esteem,

Again. Only Americans are conditioned to value and cherish their self esteem. That was my statement.

Other cultures do not put any emphasis on self esteem (and many consider it as something shameful to even talk about it).

[burkaman]

Fine, I would be interested to see evidence of that if you have any. The study you linked was not related, and that doesn't match up with my own experiences with non-American.

[sklogic]

The study is related - it shows an attitude to self esteem, while you're apparently trying to compare the self esteem itself.

[burkaman]

Do you have a quote that describes that, because that's not what I saw at all. The basic summary is that while Chinese people tend to evaluate their skills more modestly than Americans, their emotional self esteem is just as high. I didn't see anything analyzing how they value their self esteem, or how it affects their behavior.