Unforgiving Confucian culture: A breeding ground for high academic achievement, test anxiety and self-doubt?

a r t i c l e i n f o This paper reviews findings from several studies that contribute to our understanding of cross-cultural differences in academic achievement, anxiety and self-doubt. The focus is on comparisons between Confucian Asian and European regions. Recent studies indicate that high academic achievement of students from Confucian Asian countries is accompanied by higher levels of anxiety and self-doubt. After examining method, measurement, and context explanations of these findings, I argue that the culture of people living in contemporary Confucian Asian countries might be the driving force behind the combination of high achievement and negative psychological outcomes. Although forgiveness is a part of Confucian philosophy, people from modern Confucian Asian countries appear to be less forgiving than Europeans — i.e., they tend to disagree with statements that express toughness, maliciousness, and proviolence less strongly than Europeans. This relatively unforgiving attitude, coupled with the belief that effort rather than ability is the primary source of success, may be able to explain both high achievement and high anxiety and self-doubt among Confucian Asian students. The aim of this paper is to bring together three related but hitherto somewhat separate areas of cross-cultural research, namely, studies of: a) educational achievement in cognitive domains; b) students' background variables that are non-cognitive in nature but have been found to be educationally important; and c) a broad range of non-cognitive and personality measures that are not part of a typical educational arsenal but are known to differ across cultures. International comparisons of academic achievement have been conducted for several decades now: the main findings from recent international assessments will be summarized briefly in the following section. Studies that link academic achievement to background variables are also not new, but in recent years there has been increased interest in this area of research. Finally, recent cross-cultural studies of personality, social attitudes, values and social norms seem to contain plausible clues as to the reasons for high anxiety and self-doubt in some high-achieving countries. The focus of this paper will be on comparisons between Confucian Asian and European countries. House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman and Gupta (2004) provide justification for classifying all countries in the world into ten " societal clusters " or world regions on the basis of language, religion, geography, ethnicity and work-related values and attitudes. House et al. (2004) classification was based in part on Inglehart's (1997) use of World …