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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
•\ 224•\
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
•\ 25•\
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-
•\ 226•\
Assessing Japanese Interpersonal Communication Competence
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-
•\ 227•\
Jiro Takai and Hiroshi Ota
Table 1Factor structure of the Japanese Interpersonal Competence Scale (JICS)
•\ 28•\
Assessing Japanese Interpersonal Communication Competence
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
•\ 229•\—
Jiro Takai and Hiroshi Ota
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
•\ 30•\
Assessing Japanese Interpersonal Communication Competence
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,
•\ 231•\
Jiro Takai and Hiroshi Ota
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-
•\ 232•\
Assessing Japanese Interpersonal Communication Competence
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
•\ 233•\
Jiro Takai and Hiroshi Ota
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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Assessing Japanese Interpersonal Communication Competence
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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