AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE NORM OF NOBLESSE OBLIGE AMONG THE EDUCATED ELITE IN JAPAN

Abstract

In general, “academic elites” need to be aware of their responsibilities and duties according to their status and have an “aristocratic sense of responsibility” to serve society. However, as university education has become popularized in recent years, there is a suspicion that their sense of aristocratic responsibility has diminished. If their sense of aristocratic responsibility, which could be a member of the leadership of society, declines, Japan as a whole may suffer a great loss, for example, because necessary policies may not be implemented. In this study, we measured the sense of aristocratic responsibility of today’s academic elites through a Web-based survey. The results suggest that the older educated elites have a stronger sense of aristocratic responsibility than the non-educated elites, while there is no significant difference among the younger educated elites, i.e., the younger educated elites have less sense of aristocratic responsibility. This suggests that younger educated elites have less sense of aristocratic responsibility.