Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence: Evidence from Japan's "northern frontier."

TLDR

Voluntary frontier settlement is hypothesized to promote independent agency, a claim that can be examined in Japan’s Hokkaido, a region historically settled by ethnic Japanese since the 1870s and now home to many descendants of those settlers. The study aims to test whether such settlement history in an otherwise interdependent culture leads to independent agency traits comparable to those of European Americans. The authors surveyed residents of Hokkaido to assess indicators of independent agency. Results show that Hokkaido residents exhibit independent agency markers—such as linking happiness to personal achievement, self‑justification under threat, and causal attribution bias—at levels similar to European Americans, while these markers are largely absent among non‑Hokkaido Japanese residents, underscoring the role of settlement history in cultural persistence.

Abstract

The authors hypothesized that economically motivated voluntary settlement in the frontier fosters independent agency. While illuminating the historical origin of American individualism, this hypothesis can be most powerfully tested in a region that is embedded in a broader culture of interdependence and yet has undergone a recent history of such settlement. The authors therefore examined residents of Japan's northern island (Hokkaido). Hokkaido was extensively settled by ethnic Japanese beginning in the 1870s and for several decades thereafter. Many of the current residents of Hokkaido are the descendents of the original settlers from this period. As predicted, Japanese socialized and/or immersed in Hokkaido were nearly as likely as European Americans in North America to associate happiness with personal achievement (Study 1), to show a personal dissonance effect wherein self-justification is motivated by a threat to personal self-images (Study 2), and to commit a dispositional bias in causal attribution (Study 3). In contrast, these marker effects of independent agency were largely absent for non-Hokkaido residents in Japan. Implications for theories of cultural change and persistence are discussed.