Psychological Consequences of Postindustrial Anomie on Self and Motivation Among Japanese Youth

Abstract

Due to economic structural changes in Japan, an increasing population of youth are “Not engaged in Employment, Education, or Training” (NEET). We argue that this state of anomie is associated with a lack of motivation in conforming to interdependent norms. To illustrate this type of “deviant” motivation, we conducted a study in which high‐ and low risk Japanese students were given either success or failure feedback upon completing a challenging task. Low risk Japanese students were more likely to persist on the challenging task upon being given negative feedback compared to being given positive feedback. This motivational pattern is consistent with that of the prototypical Japanese (Heine et al.). In contrast, the opposite pattern was found with high risk Japanese students. High risk students were also lower on levels of interdependence relative to low risk students according to both explicit and implicit measures of self‐construal.