From Joanne Scutero:

Re: It seems we're all more human than average (March 14 ): One sentence towards the end of the piece really struck me:

"The self-enhancement ef­fect was stronger than the self hu­manizing ef­fect in four na­tions, but self-hu­manizing was stronger in Ger­ma­ny and Ja­pan."

These are the two countries who were the main aggressors in World War 2, and I can't help wondering if the results of this survey reflect that people in those two countries still dealing with the psychological aftermath of that war (and the attitude of other cultures towards the Germans and the Japanese as a result of what those two countries did).

Perhaps it's the other way around, and this tendency in the Germans and Japanese was one of numerous factors that led them into war in the first place.