Miyoko Onishi's research while affiliated with University of California, Santa Cruz and other places

This study compared the personality attributes associated with self-report versus interview assessment of romantic attachment. Twenty-three-year-olds (N = 83) completed the Romantic Attachment Interview, the Experiences in Close Relationship Inventory, and measures of response bias, self-enhancement, and self-insight. Five psychologists evaluated the participants' personality. Although both self-report and interview assessment were related to attachment-relevant personality attributes, interview assessment was slightly more likely to explain unique variance in personality, especially regarding intrapsychic attributes. Self-enhancement was negatively related to secure attachment and positively related to dismissing attachment. The opposite pattern emerged for self-insight. A subgroup of 12 vulnerable individuals who described themselves as securely attached on self-report was judged as dismissing according to interview assessment. These individuals scored low on self-insight and high on self-enhancement and psychological vulnerability. The results are discussed with reference to the relative strengths of different measures of romantic attachment and relations among dismissing attachment, self-enhancement, and narcissism.

This study introduces a cultural theme analysis to assess within–culture variation in attachment, with special emphasis on asymmetry in Japanese marital roles. Thirty–nine young urban married Japanese couples were interviewed using a modification of the Adult Attachment Interview. The participants also described their marital experiences, viewed both from their own and from their spouse”s perspective, and the ego resiliency of their child. Husbands” attachment strategies vis–à–vis their parents and their adherence to the marital asymmetry theme conjointly influenced their marital attachment security. The secure husband’s strategy seemed to be enhanced by using his “motherly” wife as a secure base, thereby leading to higher marital attachment security. In contrast, the dismissing husband—when adhering to the marital asymmetry theme—appeared to further intensify deactivating strategies by downplaying the emotional significance of his motherly wife. Thus the marital asymmetry theme appears to have different psychological implications for Japanese husbands, depending on their attachment strategies (secure versus dismissive). Conceptual and methodological issues in the study of adult attachment from a cultural perspective are discussed.

A prototype-matching approach was employed to assess romantic attachment in young adults. The 48-item Hazan and Shaver’s Experiences in Close Relationships inventory was configured, via prototype definitions, to capture core themes of four romantic attachment patterns: secure, preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful. The personality attributes associated with each attachment pattern were evaluated by referencing both observer evaluations and self-report correlates. The observer evaluations of the individuals matching the secure, preoccupied, and fearful prototypes were mostly congruent with their self-perceptions, whereas somewhat greater discrepancy emerged for individuals matching the dismissing prototype. The discussion focused on differences in the personality functioning associated with different romantic attachment patterns, the prototype-matching method, the importance of including both observer- and self-report data in the validation of self-report measures, and the relative advantages of self-report versus interview methodologies in studying attachment.

The characterization of Japan ‘culture’ has long been a subject of interest both to Japanese and non-Japanese scholars. Of course, many, if not most countries have an interest in defining their culture as unique and cohesive. Japan, however, has been more concerned than most with defining its uniqueness, giving rise to a widely used concept: Nihonjinron (theories of Japanese uniqueness). Different attributes (e.g., language, race, blood) have been woven together to form a cohesive cultural ideology [e.g., Yoshino, 1992; Befu, 1993; Morris-Suzuki, 1998]. The idea of homogeneity plays a particularly important part in this ideology [e.g., Weiner, 1997]. Prime minister Yoshiro Mori’s comment (May, 2000) that Japan is a ‘divine country with the emperor at its center’ is an example of how the conservative Japanese political elite continues to promote this cultural nationalism. This preoccupation with cultural uniqueness illustrates Said’s [1979] comment that Orientalism has reached the ‘Orient’ itself.

"Measuring the Home Environments of Children in Early Adolescence" describes the development of a scale that is to be used with adolescents from different "ethnic groups": African Americans, Chinese Americans, European Americans, Mexican Americans, and Dominican Americans.1 The previous Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) scales have proven very useful. The scale presented in the target article is likely to find wide usage and to contribute importantly to our knowledge of adolescents' home environments.