A research group led by graduate student Cheng Shaofeng (at the time of the research) and Professor Ishii Keiko at Nagoya University revealed that Japanese people are less likely to seek social support than Americans because they have lower empathic concern.
It is known that East Asians, including the Japanese, are more reluctant to seek social support, such as help or emotional support, from others than Westerners. The background to this is a cultural characteristic, particularly in Japan, where people place great importance on harmony in interpersonal relationships with others, and there is a strong concern that seeking social support will destroy that harmony.
On the other hand, this study focused on empathic concern (sympathy and compassion for those in need) and examined its impact on the likelihood of seeking social support.
Through a comparative study of Japan and the United States using an experiment with American and Japanese participants, it was found that Americans have higher empathic concern and expectations of altruistic behavior from others than Japanese people, and that the higher these are, the more likely they are to seek social support. It was also found that Japanese people tend to understand difficulties and mental pain as "retribution for deviating from or violating social norms and order," and that the more likely people are to understand them in this way, the lower their empathic concern.
These results show that people with high empathic concern are more likely to expect altruistic behavior from others and to seek social support. Conversely, in Japan, due to the unique cultural background of interpreting suffering as a punishment for deviating from a person's social norms and order, people have low expectations of empathic concern and altruistic behavior from others, which may make it harder to seek social support.
The findings of this study suggest that culture and empathy play a role in facilitating social support seeking and highlight the importance of interventions that enhance empathic concern.
Paper information:【Emotion】Empathic concern promotes social support-seeking: Across-cultural study
