Secondary data analyses of large scale international student assessment, such as TIMSS and PISA, reveal that school systems generally cannot attain highly cognitively and affectively at the same time. One reason put forward as an explanation of this attitudes-achievement paradox concerns with comparing incomparable student survey responses to the Likert-type response scale of attitude items. PISA 2012 is the first large-scale international student assessment to tackle response styles in attitudinal measures for improving comparability across cultures. Given that the top seven high-performing economies in PISA 2012 are all in East Asia, this study seeks to find out whether the use of the interest in mathematics measure based on anchoring vignettes in its computation can resolve the attitudes-achievement paradox or not. The findings render educational practitioners to have a better understanding regarding successful fostering of cognition and affection of the East Asian economies in accordance with the requirements of their mathematics curricula.