Explanatory style, family expressiveness, and self-esteem among Asian American and European American college students

Fifty-nine Asian American and 40 European American college students completed questionnaires measuring explanatory style, family expressiveness, and self-esteem. In both groups, a global explanatory style correlated with low self-esteem, but only among European Americans was an internal style associated with low self-esteem. The two groups differed in reported styles of family expressiveness, with Asian Americans indicating more emotional restraint. The participants who reported more negative submissiveness had a more global explanatory style, whereas those who reported more positive dominance had a less global explanatory style. An additional measure developed to assess attribution to collectivities did not distinguish the two groups. Results were discussed in terms of the cross-cultural generality of the learned helplessness reformulation.