Cross-Cultural Study about the Relationships among Perfectionistic Self-Presentation, Self-Construals, Shame, Social Anxiety and Social Phobia.

Past research found perfectionistic self-presentation (needs to appear perfect in the eyes of others and not display/disclosure imperfections in public) correlated with many psychopathologies and seldom linked it with various emotions such as shame, social anxiety, and social phobia cross-culturally. This study examined the relationships among these variables in undergraduate students from collectivist society mainland China and individualistic society Canada. The goal of the present study was to test the relationship among these variables in both non-clinical samples and explore whether the different cultures, and gender roles have a greater impact on three facets particularly nondisplay and nondisclosure imperfections and psychological functioning in mainland Chinese than it does in European Canadians. 126 Chinese undergraduate students were recruited in North University in mainland China (MCs) and 132 Canadians with European descent (ECs) were born in Canada were recruited in York University of Toronto of Canada. Participants were asked to fill out the questionnaires including Perfectionistic Self-presentation Scale, The Experience of Shame Scale, Self-construal Scale, Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and Social Phobia Scale, and demographic information. ECs completed the questionnaires in English online through URPP system of York University. MCs answered the questionnaires which were translated into Mandarin on the paper. Results showed that effects of culture on perfectionistic self-presentation and the emotion variables via two-way multivariate Analyses of Variance. MCs reported higher than ECs on perfectionism self-promotion. MCs were lower than ECs on social anxiety. MCs were higher than ECs on social phobia. Women reported less than men on nondisclosure imperfections. The correlation analyses showed similar patterns in our Chinese and Canadian samples. The nondisplay and nondisclosure imperfections were positively correlated to each other, and also correlated to all the emotion variables, but perfectionistic self-promotion was only correlated to shame, and social phobia rather than anxiety. Our findings indicate that culture and social context also play a significant role on the differences of perfectionistic self-presentation and other emotion variables between two different groups and influence on their well-beings.