TO CONFORM OR TO MAINTAIN SELF-CONSISTENCY? HIKIKOMORI RISK IN JAPAN AND THE DEVIATION FROM SEEKING HARMONY

There is an increasing number of youth in Japan who are dropping out of society and isolating themselves in their bedrooms from years to decades at a time. These so-called hikikomori or social isolates have been described by Japanese clinicians as suffering most commonly from an autism spectrum disorder. However, such claims come out of examining biased samples of hikikomori who have already been referred to mental health professionals. Alternatively, we argue that the tendency for hikikomori represents an increasing marginalization of Japanese youth who are consciously rejecting dominant cultural values of harmony-seeking and consequently deviating in their motivation to conform to others' behaviors. The current study tests for this alternative argument for hikikomori tendencies. One hundred ninety-five participants were recruited from Japanese universities and divided into high risk vs. low risk of becoming hikikomori according to an instrument that measures such risks. As expected, high risk students shared similar. social perceptions about pervasive values in their society as low risk students, thereby ruling out deficits in social perception as being associated with hikikomori risk. Instead, high risk students were not motivated to conform to others' behaviors relative to low risk students and this difference was fully mediated by differences in preferred levels of harmony-seeking. Furthermore, high risk students scored lower on both local identity and global identity relative to low risk students, thereby reifying their marginalized identity in Japanese society.