How culture affects the use of language to self-disclose positive information

Abstract

This study investigated how culture affects language use in communicating one’s good performance. Participants from Estonia (N = 113), China (N = 119), and America (N = 122) were included. We asked participants to imagine they took an exam with a close friend and received a very good score. Participants had to choose from the given lexical choices to describe their good performance to a third person, with the close friend’s presence (present vs. absent) and score (good vs. bad) being manipulated. We found that across all cultures, people used a weaker term to describe their good performance when their friend’s score was bad, and this effect was more prominent when the friend was present. We did not find a significant additional effect of culture. Potential reasons like modesty were discussed.