Successful Asians Sabotage Peers’ Legitimate Self-Enhancement

This research examines how Asian students react to peers’ self-enhancement. I found that even totally legitimate self-enhancement (i.e., agreeing to publish one’s high score) will get an Asian sabotaged by other successful peers in their society. In Study 1, I found that Asian students who succeeded, rather than who failed or in the control condition, were more likely to sabotage a slightly self-enhancing target person who agreed to publish his/her success. In Study 2, I replicated the results when participants and the target person were in different domains of success.