Perseverance Pays

Perseverance Pays, a photo by timtak on Flickr.

This picture shows a large Japanese cram school or juku in which school students spend their evenings cramming facts that they anticipate will be asked in examinations, particularly university entrance examinations. The catch copy of this particular cram school is "doryoku ha minoru" or "perseverance pays."

The Japanese are incremental theorists (Dweck, 1999) believing that individual potential is limited only by how much one tries (Heine et al. 2001). The Japanese are therefore very much into persevering. While Westerners try hard too, they also tend to be entity theorists believing that the self is not infinately maleable so rather than banging ones head against a brick wall (or cram school), people are advised to find their forte, the area of human endeavour that matches their inate potential, in which they will be able to excell without out excessive perseverance.