assessing japanese interpersonal communication competence

The Japanese Journal of ExperimentalSocial Psychology. 1994, Vol. 33, No. 3, 224-236

Original Article

Assessing Japanese Interpersonal

Communication Competence

JIRO TAKAI

Nagoya City University

HIROSHI OTA

University of California, Santa Barbara

ABSTRACT

The assessment of interpersonal communication competence in Japan has been tradition-

ally done through translated versions of mainly Western-made scales, devised on the Western

cultural definition of competence. A review of the more commonly used scales revealed that cultural bias in these translated scales has rendered them as having lower levels of concurrent

validity. The purpose of this study was to devise a scale for assessing the communication skills that have been accepted as being more or less typical of Japanese. A 31-item scale, named

the Japanese Interpersonal Competence Scale (JICS) was constructed and administered to 707 subjects of all age ranges to determine the structure of Japanese interpersonal communi-

cation competence. The factors of Perceptive Ability, Self-Restraint, Social Appropriateness,

Interpersonal Sensitivity and Tolerance for Ambiguity were revealed. Validity and reliability tests showed that JICS is a promising instrument for the assessment of competence.

Key words: interpersonal communication competence, assessment, Japanese, valid-

ity, reliability

Interpersonal communication competence has

gained popularity as an area of research in re-cent years, both in and outside Japan. However, in the domestic case, much of the work has been done by investigators who take it for granted that such individual skills and their assessment are culturally universal. In fact, since the transla-tion of Snyder's (1974) Self-Monitoring Scale in the early 1980's (Iwabuchi, Tanaka & Nakazato, 1982), a wide battery of the so-called interper-sonal competence scales have been translated and administered in Japan (Daibo, 1989; Ishihara & Mizuno, 1992; Iwabuchi & Tanaka, 1987; Masu-tani & Matsuyama, 1988; Masutani & Nakamura, 1990; Nakamura & Masutani, 1991), while others have been constructed in Japan based on Western definitions of interpersonal competence (Kikuchi,

1988; Wada, 1991). The problem with this is,

that most studies fail to recognize the cultural bias

inherent within the conceptualization of compe-

tence as had been defined in the culture of origin.

This does not pose any problems if the concept

is equivalent between Japan and the culture in

which the translated scales have been developed.

As can be attested by the amount of literature on

•gJapanology•h, however, the Japanese seem to con-

stitute a rather unique culture, so cultural equiv-

alence is not likely.

Hui and Triandis (1985) have identified four

types of cultural equivalence: conceptual/func-

tional equivalence; equivalence in construct con-

ceptualization; item equivalence; and scalar equiv-

alence. In order for cultural equivalence to be

achieved, all four types must be satisfied. With

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Assessing Japanese Interpersonal Communication Competence

respect to the translated scales, even though in-

vestigators take great care in achieving seman-

tic equivalence by resorting to such tactics as

the back-translation technique, it is doubtful that

conceptual equivalence in a highly culture-loaded

matter as interpersonal competence can be at-

tained by mere translation.

Interpersonal competence has been identified

by Spitzberg and Cupach (1989) as the ability

to interact effectively with other people. It is

conceived to consist of the components of effec-

tiveness and appropriateness (Bochner & Kelly,

1974). Effectiveness is defined as, •gsuccessful goal

achievement or task accomplishment,•h whereas

appropriateness is, •gthe avoidance of violating

social or interpersonal norms, rules, or expecta-

tions•h (Spitzberg Cupach, 1989, p.7). The ef-

fect of culture is especially apparent in the lat-

ter. Appropriateness involves social norms and

rules, which are culturally defined. What is con-

sidered polite and socially tactful in one culture

may not be considered so in another. For exam-

ple, although self-assertion is important in both

Japan and in Western cultures (effectiveness di-

mension), the means by which assertion is done

differs (appropriateness dimension). Hall's (1976)

distinction of high and low context cultures may

provide a relevant explanation for this difference.

In a low context, Western culture, appropriateness

may be exemplified by a verbal-oriented, explicit

form of communication, while in Japan, it may

consist of an indirect, implicit style (Okabe, 1983).

Therfore, in a Western culture, one may express

his/her dissatisfaction to a superior directly, while

in Japan, one would most likely use indirect tac-

tics to hint to the superior of his/her dissatisfac-

tion. Individual assessment scales constructed in

Western cultures, then, may not be appropriate

for Japanese.

The uniqueness of the Japanese people have

long been an issue of interest to Japanese. The so-

called •gJapanologists•h have produced best-sellers,

approaching the matter from perspectives such

as Nakane's (1970) vertical society, Doi's (1971)

theory of amae, Hamaguchi's (1977) kanjin the-

ory and Nakayama's (1989) bokashi theory. Mi-

dooka (1990) has summarized Japanese inter-

personal communication tendencies, and these

include maintenance of interpersonal harmony

(ƒÖa), in-group/out-group distinction, hierarchy

consciousness, notions of public and private, honne

and tatemae, nemawashi, yoriai and particular

nonverbal usage. Okabe (1983) notes that, •gthe

cultural assumptions of interdependence and har-

mony require that Japanese speakers limit them-

selves to implicit and even ambiguous use of

words•h (p. 36). Furthermore, Yoshikawa (1978)

delves on the importance of kan, or intuitive-

ness, in order to distinguish between tatemae and

honne. As in the high context culture description,

Japanese interpersonal communication seems to

slight direct verbal messages relative to indirect

signs. From these speculations, it would appear

that perhaps the Japanese are better decoders

than encoders of messages.

Despite claims toward Japanese uniqueness,

Japanese research on interpersonal competence to

present have, by and large, neglected such ob-

servations of cultural specificity, and have cho-

sen to translate and administer Western devel-

oped scales onto a Japanese population. When-

ever a construct developed in one culture is forced

upon another culture in this way, problems arise

in the validity of the construct within this second

culture. Berry (1989) calls this •gimposed etic•h

For example, taking a self-assertion skills scale de-

vised in a Western culture, based on the concept

and notion of self-assertion in that culture, and

translating and administering it in Japan, does

not guarantee that the instrument gives a valid

measure of self-assertion skills in Japan. When

the two cultures vary as much as the American

and Japanese on self-assertion, serious problems

arise. Berry (1989) suggests that cross-cultural

research should separate the emic from the etic,

that is, the similarities, not the differences be-

tween cultures should be identified, and treated

as a •gderived etic•h, which allows for valid com-

parison. Another possibility is the emic approach,

that is, to construct an instrument based on the

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Jiro Takai and Hiroshi Ota

conceptual framework as it exists in the culture in

which assessment is to be done. An original scale

intended, on tapping characteristics of people in a

single culture only is produced, but cross-cultural

use and comparison are not afforded.

A look at the more popular scales in Japan

would reveal that most of them are imposed etic

scales, i.e., merely translated. For example, Sny-

der's (1974) Self-Monitoring Scale (Iwabuchi et al.,

1982) contains an item making reference to being

an •gentertainer•h. The concept of entertainer is

foreign to Japanese, and even if ultimate care had

been taken to explain what that meant, it would

carry with it a negative connotation. Markus and

Kitayama (1991) argue that expressions of inter-

nal feelings, thoughts and being unique are char-

acteristic of an independent construal of self, while

belonging, fitting in and engaging in appropriate

action are typical of the interdependent construal

of self, as for Japanese. Hence, in Japan, people

trying to impress and entertain others may be seen

as being arrogant and disruptive of interpersonal

harmony, as in the adege, •ga nail that sticks out

must be hammered down.•h

Futhermore, Iwabuchi et al. report a three

factor structure in the translated version of the

Self-Monitoring Scale, compared to one in Sny-

der's American administration. Mizuno (1991)

examined the validity of Snyder's and Lennox

and Wolfe's (1984) self-monitoring scales, and dis-

covered a tendency for the scales to correlate

negatively with social intelligence. He concluded

that the cultural factor should be attributed to

their lack of validity. Meanwhile, Gudykunst,

Yang and Nishida (1987) hypothesized that peo-

ple of collective cultures should show higher

self-monitoring than those of individual cultures.

However, with Snyder's scale and their imposed

etic approach, the opposite pattern was seen.

They concluded that self-monitoring does not con-

sist of universal features, but those distinctive

with the dimension of individualism-collectivism.

According to Gudykunst et al., •gwhile self-

monitoring in individualistic cultures involves be-

having as prototypic persons would behave in the

situation at hand, according to Snyder's (1979)

conceptualization, members of collectivistic cul-

tures must take into consideration the specific in-

dividuals present in the situation and their sta-

tus relationship with them in deciding how to be-

have in a paticular situation•h (pp.26-27). Aside

from self-monitoring, scales devised on the as-

sumption that free and open expression of emo-

tion is desirable, such as Zuckerman and Larrance

(1979) and Friedman et al. (1980), may also suf-

fer from validity problems in administration to-

ward Japanese, who are known to conceal emo-

tions (Friesen, 1979). Thus, discrepancies in con-

ceptualization are likely to cause confounding in

the imposed etic scales.

It is not to say that original scales have not been developed in Japan. Wada's (1991) Nonver-bal Skills Scale and Horike's (1987) Social Skills Scale are two scales devised on the emic prin-ciple. Wada revealed factors of nonverbal non-expressivity and control, and nonverbal sensitiv-ity. It would appear that Japanese are less expres-sive of thier emotions, and that sensitivity to sub-tle nonverbal signs are warranted. Horike's scale was intended on assessing hitoatari no yosa, or

good-naturedness, and its items are based purely on Japanese emics. Themes of group conformity, respect for elders, emotional control, etc. are in-cluded. Horike's items are designed in a manner such as to provide a specific interaction target (e.g.

your uncle, your mother), in situation specific set-tings. Spitzberg and Cupach (1989), however, as-sert that trait measures of competence should al-low for generality of ability across situations, and with this respect, Horike's items may be consid-ered situation bound.

The purpose of this study is to develop an

alternative trait measurement scale of interper-

sonal competence, and to examine its validity and

reliability. The scale will be constructed along

Japanese cultural assumptions of interpersonal

competence, and will implement an emic ap-

proach.

Method

SubjectsThe subjects were 302 universiy students (185

male, 114 female, 3 unreported) and 405 non-

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students (208 male, 186 female, 11 unreported),

consisting a total of 707 subjects. The student

data was collected from undergraduates enrolled

in a foreign language course at a small univer-

sity in Nagoya, Japan. The students were ma-

jors in either economics or medicine, and received

course credit. The non-student data was collected

through these students from parents and other re-

lations. A •gnon-student•h was defined as an adult

not enrolled in any full-time school program, in-

cluding those working full-time, part-time and

those unemployed (housewives, retired persons,

etc.).

Assessment ScaleA review of selected literature on Japanese

interpersonal behavior was done to gain in-sight on items. The literature included Barnlund

(1975, 1989), Hamaguchi (1982), Midooka (1991), Nakane (1979) and Sugiyama-Lebra (1981). Ma-

jor themes of interpersonal harmony mainte-nance, perceptibility and sensitivity, humility and modesty, reservation and hesitation, hierarchy consciousness, relationship consciousness, depen-dency, group consciousness and conformity (col-lectivism), and context consciousness were iden-tified. Item content was devised according to these themes, which were believed to constitute Japanese ideals of interpersonal competence.

Because the proposed assessment scale was in-

tended to treat competence as a •gtrait,•h the fol-

lowing criteria were carefully attended to. First,

from Spitzberg and Cupach's (1984) argument

that •gcompetence as a trait ultimately must boil

down to an individual effectively communicating

across contexts•h (p.92), care was taken to assure

that items would be general in context, since fo-

cusing on specific content would render them sit-

uation bound. Such a task was difficult, as the

high context nature of Japanese interpersonal be-

havior may attest. Perhaps this difficulty is the

reason for the void in empirical research regarding

assessment of Japanese interpersonal competence.

Second, with respect to evalulation, self-rating of

•gability•h was selected over frequency of actual per-

formance, since the former would allow for more

generality and ease in response for the subjects. Thus, the degree to which subjects are confident of performing an act was to be measured.

The construction of items, accordingly, was done to question subjects on their ability to

perform specific behaviors. Items were based on the themes outlined above and the features of Japanese interpersonal communication as de-scribed in the introduction, and were roughly cat-egorized into encoding and decoding behaviors in their initial composition. A total of 31 items was devised, organized on five-point Likert-type scales

(agree-disagree), on which subjects rate them-selves on their perceived ability to perform the act described. This scale was named the Japanese In-terpersonal Competence Scale (JICS).

For the purpose of determining JICS's concur-

rent validity, some of the more widely used scales

that had either been translated into Japanese or

were devised in Japan were selected to be admin-

istered alongside the JICS. The Self-Monitoring

Scale (SM-Snyder, 1974; translated by Iwabuchi

et al. 1982), the Affective Communication Test

(ACT-Friedman et al., 1980; translated by Daibo,

1989), Horike's (1987) Social Skills Scale (HSS),

Wada's (1991) Nonverbal Skills Scale (WNS),

the Perceived Encoding and Decoding Abilities

Scales (PEA & PDA-Zuckerman •• Larrance,

1979; translated by Nakamura & Masutani, 1991)

and Kikuchi's (1988) Social Skill Scale (KSS) were

set up on the same five-point Likert scales as the

JICS.

ProcedureThe student sample was administered ques-

tionaires on two separate occasions. The first ad-ministration consisted of JICS, SM (25 items), ACT (13 items), HSS (18 items) and WNS (12 items). Six weeks later, the same subjects were administered a second questionnaire, consisting of JICS, PDA (32 items), PEA (32 items) and. KSS

(18 items). The JIGS was administered twice in order to check the stability of items through a test-retest. The six week period between ad-

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Table 1Factor structure of the Japanese Interpersonal Competence Scale (JICS)

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ministrations was alloted so as to eliminate effects

of carry-over in response. Course credit was of-

fered each time. A total of 253 valid test-retest sets of responses were collected. The actual num-

ber of student subjects from which data was ob-

tained in either administration was 336, but those

questionnaires in which response sets and other bias were evident were eliminated, composing a

total of 302.

The non-student sample was administered

only the JICS. Each student subject was given

the opportunity to gain extra course credit by

taking questionnaires home to be completed by

non-students. Response was totally voluntary for

these subjects. A total of 440 responses were col-lected, but again, those with response sets and

other apparent biases were eliminated, making the

total 405.

Results

Factor Analysis

The first set of JICS items for the student

sample and the resposes of the non-student sam-

ple, composing a total of 707 valid responses, were added together to give a 31 item composite score.

Each item was correlated to this composite, and

items showing low correlations were eliminated

from further analysis. This measure was taken to

sort out items that were not strongly relevant to-

ward what the majority of the items were assess-

ing. Thus, an effective factor analysis was made

possible.Nine items were deleted in this process, leav-

ing 22 items to be subjected to a factor analysis

using principle factor analysis with varimax rota-

tion. Five factors were extracted with Eigen val-

ues of over 1.00. Table 1 shows the factors and

the items that compose them. From the prelim-

inary weeding, the factor analysis proved to be

stable with all items having a communality over

.40 and a difference in loading of more than .11

between principle and secondary factor loadings.

The high communalities indicated that all items

were highly consistent in what they were measur-

ing, and the gap between the strongest and the

second strongest factor loadings for each item as-

sured discriminant validity, that is, each factor was

independent of another.

The first factor had an Eigen value of 4.04, ac-

counting for 18.6% of the variance. It consisted

of six items pertaining to the ability to perceive

subtle and indirect messages, and was called •gPer-

ceptive Ability•h (PA). The second factor, with an

Eigen of 2.72 and 12.4% accounted variance, was

composed of seven items that dealt with conceal-

ing true feelings and witholding assertion toward

maintenance of interpersonal harmony. This fac-

tor was called •gSelf-Restraint•h (SR). The third

factor had an Eigen of 1.83 and a variance of 8.3%.

Three items making reference to proper behav-

ior and language use in interaction with superi-

ors formed this factor, called •gHierarchial Rela-

tionship Management•h (HRM). The fourth factor,

with an Eigen of 1.42 and 6.5% accounted vari-

ance, consisted of three items dealing with manip-

ulation of sensitive messages, and was called •gIn-

terpersonal Sensitivity•h (IS). The fifth and final

factor had an Eigen of 1.13 and 5.1% of the vari-

ance. It was formed from three items concerning

interaction skills that involve ambiguous stance,

and was labelled •gTolerance for Ambiguity•h (TA).

Overall, the five factors accounted for 50.9% of the

total variance.

Validity and Reliability

The internal consistency reliability of the fac-

tors were analyzed using the Cronbach Alpha.

Coefficients ranged from .80 to .64, indicating

satisfactory levels of consistency. Table 2 shows

the Alpha coefficients for their respective factors.

These Alpha values were compared to between

factor correlation coefficients, to check for dis-

criminant validity. Since no correlation value was

of comparable magnitude to their relevant Alpha

value, it can be said that these factors had dis-

criminant validity.

As an indication of the stability of the factors

over time, test-retest reliability coefficients were

calculated using the student sample. A total of

253 sets of responses were collected over a six week

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Table 2

Between factor correlations and internal consistencies for JICS

Table 3

Correlation of JICS factors with other competence scales

gap and the sets were correlated. The following coefficients were obtained: .75 for PA; .71 for SR; .70 for HRM; .71 for IS; .64 for TA; and .81 for the whole JICS scale. These represent satisfac-tory levels of stability.

Concurrent validity was tested by correlating the JICS and its factors with some of the more

popular interpersonal scales available in Japanese. Table 3 shows the correlation matrix. JICS as a whole showed high positive correlations with Horike's Social Skills Scale (.66) and Perceived Decoding Ability (.55); moderate correlation with Kikuchi's Social Skills Scale (.49), Wada's Non-verbal Skills Scale (.45) and Self-Monitoring Scale

(.36); and weak, but statistically significant corre-lations with Affective Communication Test (.22) and Perceived Encoding Ability (-.12), the lat-ter being a negative correlation. As expected, the

JICS, which was constructed to assess Japanese interpersonal competence, had a very strong rela-tionship to Horike's scale, which was constructed

with the same purpose in mind. With this rela-tionship to the external criteria, concurrent valid-ity appears to have been satisfied.

Correlations between the factors and the other competence scales revealed the following. First, for PA, strong to moderate relationships were found between PDA, KSS, HSS, SM, WNS and ACT. Of particular importance is the very strong correlation (.60) of PA (perceptive Ability) to the PDA (Perceived Decoding Ability), suggest-ing that the same construct has been assessed. Second, for SR, strong to moderate correlations were seen for HSS, KSS, WNS and PDA. For the HRM factor, HSS, PDA and KSS showed moder-ate or stronger relationships, while for the IS fac-tor, moderate correlations were attained for PDA, ACT, SM, KSS, HSS and WNS. Finally, for TA, the only moderate correlation was negative with PED. The number of significantly strong correla-tions with other scales and their magnitude show that the factors of JICS are relevant indicators of

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Table 4

JICS factor means by sex, occupation and engagement in opposite sex relationship

interpersonal competence. Therefore, the factors

have convergent validity on top of the discriminant

validity described above.

Demographic VariablesA further test of validity was done with demo-

graphic variables. The student sample was asked to report personal factors, such as sex, age, num-ber of siblings, order of birth, family income and

presence of a date, amongst others. The non-student sample was asked on top of that, occu-

pation and position within the company. T-tests and analyses of variance for differences between means on each of the demographic variables were conducted. Table 4 shows some comparisons of means for selected variables, namely sex, occupa-tion (student/non-student) and presence of a date, while Table 5 breaks down the subjects into age

groups by tens.First, for the variable of sex, t-tests showed

that females have more interpersonal sensitivity than males (t=3.12, p<.01). Second, for oc-cupation, those beyond schooling (non-students) had higher levels of Self-Restraint (t=2.29, p<.05), Hierarchial Relationship Management Abil-

ity (t=6.35, p<.001) and Interpersonal Sensi-tivity (t=4.86, p<.001) than students, while the latter scored higher on Tolerance for Ambigu-ity (t=3.17, p<.01). Third, for engagement in an opposite sex relationship, those with a date showed higher scores on Interpersonal Sensitivity

(t=4.30, p<.001). It would appear that those who have or had entered the job market, i.e., non-students, are generally more competent, perhaps because of the increased exposure to a more com-

plex, interpersonal environment of the off-campus world. This is in consistency with the common assumption that social skills are acquired through social experience (Argyle, 1992).

Age is another indicator of the amount of so-cial experience one has acquired. Subjects were divided into six age groups by tens from the teens to 60 and over. Oneway analyses of variance were done on each factor. Hypothetically, it can be ex-

pected that mean scores would increase with age. This very pattern was seen for HRM (F(5, 677)=15.11, p<.001) and IS (F(5, 677)=4.56, p<.001), while a partially consistent pattern was ob-tained for PA (F(5, 677)=2.73, p<.05) and SR (F(5, 677) 3.61, p<.05). JICS has, thus,

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Table 5

JICS factor means by age group

demonstrated that it is age sensitive.

The interaction effects of age and sex on the

JICS factors were examined through analyses of

variance, but only significant main effects were

seen. Japanese interpersonal competence may be

acquired through socialization regardless of sex.

Discussion

JICS, or the Japanese Interpersonal Compe-

tence Scale, was created to point out the need to

consider the influence of culture in studying inter-

personal competence. It was intended to be an

emic scale particular for Japanese. The only al-

ternative, Horike's Social Skills Scale, as has been

already discussed, is situation-defined, so JICS

was designed to measure perceived ability to per-

form competent behaviors across more general sit-

uations.

The factorial structure of Japanese interper-

sonal competence was examined. Five factors,

Perceptive Ability, Self-Restraint, Hierarchial Re-

lationship Management, Interpersonal Sensitiv-

ity and Tolerance for Ambiguity, were obtained.

With reference to Perceptive Ability, the Japanese

culture is considered a high context culture, and

communication is such that •gmost of the infor-

mation is either in the physical context or in-

ternalized in the person, while very little is in

the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the mes-

sage•h (Hall, 1976, p.79). Thus, an interperson-

ally competent person would be required to sense

the cues in the interaction context through em-

pathizing with the other person, without hav-

ing the other directly transmit a message us-

ing the verbal code. Ishin denshin and the dis-

tinction of honne and tatemae illustrate this as-

pect of Japanese communication. In reference to

ishin densin, Sugiyama-Lebra (1976) asserts that

•gwords are paltry against the significance of read-

ing subtle signs and signals and the intuitive grasp

of each other's feelings•h (p.115). Furthermore,

honne and tatemae are used to maintain interper-

sonal harmony. Being able to distinguish when a

person is covering his/her true feelings in order to

be polite requires skill in empathy. The factor of

Perceptive Ability, then, is given due importance

as the first factor in Japanese interpersonal com-

petence.

The second factor, Self-Restraint, consists

mainly of items pertaining to interaction manage-

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ment in a situation involving a person with whom

the respondent holds a negative feeling or a situa-

tion in which he/she is forced to comply to some-

thing against his/her true desires. The concept

of wa is raised in this factor, and the ability to

maintain wa is directly questioned. Wa is defined

as the maintenance of interpersonal harmony, and

Midooka (1990) has identified it as the •gkey value

in Japanese. communication•h (p.486). The avoid-

ance of confrontation is often preferred over direct

communication of nagative feelings or conflict rais-

ing issues (Ting-Toomey, 1988).

The third factor, Hierarchial Relationship

Management, brings out the characteristics of the

•gvertical society•h , as described by Nakane (1970).

The use of keigo, or the polite form of language,

is perhaps the main means by which one distin-

guishes behavior toward a superior (Yoshikawa,

1978). Showing respect toward a superior is

very important, whether he/she be competent in

his/her work or not. Nakane (1970) discusses this

seniority-over-ability sentiment of the Japanese.

Interpersonal Sensitivity, the fourth factor,

deals with the encoding and decoding of sensitive

messages. Being direct and frank toward another

person when expressing some personal affect to-

ward a person can be embarassing to the receiver

of that message. A great deal of sensitivity is re-

quired in order to hint that type of message so

that the receiver would understand it. On the re-

ceiving end, as Yoshikawa (1978) mentions about

distinguishing honne and tatemae, the ability to

exercise kan also plays an important role in inter-

personal sensitivity of this sort.

The last factor, Tolerance for Ambiguity, is the ability to deal with people who are not clear in their stance, as well as the ability to act in that exact manner. Japanese communication is char-acterized by ambiguity (Okabe, 1983). As has al-ready been mentioned, the maintenance of wa re-

quires that one not express his/her feelings di-rectly. Successful interaction management with ambiguous persons, then, warrants the ability to be patient with such people until they send subtle cues, in some sort of succession, that gives away

their true stance.

These five factors seem to include many of

the major characteristics of Japanese interper-

sonal behavior, although much of the unique fea-

tures suggested by Japanologists, such as amae,

nemawashi, haragei, etc., have not been covered.

Such characteristics are difficult, if not impossible,

to assess in an empirical manner as had been em-

ployed in this study. The question can be raised

as to whether Japanese interpersonal competence

can indeed be assessed empirically. It must be ar-

gued, however, that so long as psychologists and

other professionals require a standard by which

individual differences in interpersonal competence

can be scientifically assessed, quantitative instru-

ments are justified. In such a case, scales like

JICS and Horike•fs Social Skill Scale are better

alternatives than the commonly used, translated,

imposed etic scales that argue that competence

has no cultural boundaries.

The next question to be posed is, •gIs what is

measured by JICS uniquely Japanese?•h The an-

swer to this question cannot be offered through

this present study. What is assessed in JICS may

not be characteristic of some Western interper-

sonal cultures, but it may be shared in other Asian

cultures. For instance, Gudykunst & Kim (1992)

use the individualism-collectivism paradigm to

group cultures, and they choose to view communi-

cation behaviors along this paradigm, rather than

treating each culture separately. The high and

low context distinction (Hall, 1976) would be an-

other means by which similar cultures could be

grouped together. The point is, the factors ex-

tracted from JICS, that. is, Perceptive Ability,

Self-Restraint, Hierarchial Relationship Manage-

ment, Interpersonal Sensitivity and Tolerance for

Ambiguity, may just as well be shared by Chi-

nese, Koreans and other Asian groups. They may

be characteristic of collectivistic cultures, or high

context cultures. In order to discover what skills

are unique to Japanese, a large scale cross-cultural

study will have to be conducted, i.e., the derived

etic approach (Berry, 1989) is the solution toward

identifying uniqueness. By administering JICS to

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samples in several different cultures, similarities

and differences in factor structures can be identi-

fied. Similarities between culturere considered

to be the derived etic portion, while the differ-

ences constitute the emic or culture specific por-

tion. This can be considered a necessary task in

the future, should further evidence of the validity

of JICS be summoned.

In the validity/reliability analysis, one setback of the JICS that was identified was that it re-

quired more items to give it higher levels of reli-ability. In particular, the IS and TA factors each consisted of only three items, thus, were not able to demonstrate high levels of internal consistency. Also, the TA factor, in particular, showed a rela-tively low correlation with the entire JICS scale, suggesting that it may be susceptible to validity

problems. Of the 31 items initially formed, nine items, or close to one third, were eliminated. Ad-ditional items are needed to strengthen these fac-tors, or perhaps even a restructuring of the com-

ponents may appear.Fair indication of validity and reliability were

otherwise obtained through the analyses. From

the examination of concurrent validity, JICS was

able to show high correlations with the other com-

petence scales, except for PEA, Perceived Encod-

ing Ability. As a matter of fact, Ota, Takai, and

Tanaka (1993) have shown that Horike's scale cor-

related lowly with PEA, while correlating highly

with PDA. It may be that the concept of de-

coding is common between Americans (origin of

PEA/PDA scales) and Japanese, while encod-

ing differs. That is, PDA is culturally equivalent

in its original form, while PEA must be recon-

ceptualized for use in Japan. Being sensitive to

the feelings of others is equally important in the

United States as in Japan, but being expressive

of one's self differs between the two. Also, it

can be conceived that the Japanese culture places

greater importance to the decoding process, as

communication is more implicit (Okabe, 1983).

In conjunction with this, Okabe (1987) suggests

Japanese have a •gkantoku•h style of communica-

tion, while Westerners employ a •gsettoku•h style.

Kantoku implies an emotional, intuitive, nonver-bal appeal to the other person, while settoku con-sists of clear, logical, verbal style of communica-tion. Thus, Japanese do not rely so much on di-rect means of communication, so decoding, per-haps, becomes more important than encoding.

The examination of demographic variables in-dicated that JICS was sensitive toward age differ-

ence, as well as to the student/non-student dis-tinction. Both of these can be considered indices of social experience. One of the assumptions sur-rounding social skills is that it is gained through a

social learning process (Argyle, 1992). The more social experience one has, the more the oppor-tunity to learn about social rules and norms. In

conjunction with this, the popular assertion that the younger generation are less tactful in using keigo, and that they have increasingly become self-assertive (Tanaka & Takai, 1991), appears to have

been supported by the findings in this study. It can be speculated that students have been spared from the strict hierarchial relationships and heavy

responsibility toward the group that exist in the workplace, and that they are yet to be prop-erly initiated into Japanese society. A longitudi-nal study using JICS to examine the process of

social skill acquisition through phases of socializa-tion may be an interesting future directive.

The utility of JICS can be realized in corpo-

rate training programs, for example, for company

freshmen who would be assigned positions in the

sales section. In this case, JICS may be admin-

istered to identify skill deficits, and a follow-up

social skills related training program may be em-

ployed for remedial purposes. Furthermore, JICS

may be applied as a diagnostic measure for assess-

ing suitability in the selection of foreign person-

nel to be stationed in Japan for business or other

work.

To summarize, more work is desired in order

to accurately assess the interpersonal competence

of Japanese. Japanese social psychologists must

recognize that interpersonal competence is culture

specific, and that the imposed etic approach they

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are applying have severe shortcomings. The de-

velopment of original scales, or the removal of cul-

tural biases in existing scales, are desired as a fu-

ture directive in this field.

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(Received Aug. 16, 1993; Accepted Jan. 17, 1994)

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