Interpersonal harmony pursuit in Japan and the United States: Culture shapes motivation and goal content.

Cross-cultural psychology suggests that interpersonal harmony pursuit is more strongly related to health and well-being in interdependent cultures, but less is known about the effect of culture on motivation to pursue interpersonal harmony. Employing a mixed-method design, this study investigated how pursuit of interpersonal harmony emerges from Japanese (n = 154) and U.S. participants' (n = 113) freely-listed personal goals and whether culture shapes motivation to pursue interpersonal harmony. Participants listed eight of their current strivings and evaluated their intrinsic, identified, introjected, and extrinsic reasons to pursue each goal. Results revealed that, compared to other types of goals, U.S. participants pursued interpersonal harmony goals for more intrinsic reasons, while Japanese pursued interpersonal harmony goals for more extrinsic reasons. Overall, this study reveals that culture shapes motivation to pursue interpersonal harmony and hints at the importance of distinguishing between different reasons for interpersonal harmony goal pursuit across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]