Japanese Psychological Research最新文献

Volume 64

Original Articles

Reviews

Brief Reports

Editorial

Announcement

The nine-item Attitudes toward Singlehood Scale (AtSS) is a newly developed measurement for people to self-report their manners toward staying single. The original English-version AtSS shows sound psychometric properties in the Malaysian and Indian contexts. To necessarily adapt the AtSS in cross-cultural studies, we developed the Japanese version of the AtSS (AtSS-J) and examined its psychometric qualities in a sample of 316 Japanese undergraduate students. The participants answered an online survey consisting of the AtSS-J, a (single-item) preference for being single, the Mini-Social Phobia Inventory, the Single Item Narcissism Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Confirmatory factor analysis supports that the AtSS-J has a second-order factor structure (error covariance specified between Items 3 and 5) composed of three first-order specific factors (affect, behavior, and cognition). Both Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega estimates indicated good reliability in the AtSS-J. Moreover, convergent and discriminant validity of the AtSS-J are evident, while the concurrent validity with life satisfaction as criterion variable showed inconsistent results. Overall, our findings offer preliminary support to the usability of the AtSS-J.

This study examined the longitudinal association between career outcome expectations and positive psychological capital, using data from four investigations of 885 Chinese medical students over a 9-month period. Latent growth curve modeling (LGCM) and latent growth mixture modeling (LGMM) were used to examine the overall trajectory of career outcome expectations and to group them. Career outcome expectations showed a linear growth trend on the whole. The modeling distinguished three growth trajectories of career outcome expectations. There is an association between positive psychological capital and career outcome expectations, that is, positive psychological capital positively affects career outcome expectations and not the other way around. The results speak to the noteworthy individual differences in the development of career outcome expectations among Chinese medical students.

Whether the indices of working memory present the same constructs in the same way across age groups is a fundamentally important consideration when examining developmental changes in working memory. This study examined the invariance of working memory factors across age groups. Older adults (n = 141) and younger adults (n = 141) completed inference tasks and complex span tasks of three types (operation, reading, and symmetry). The multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis extracted four factors (Recall, Processing Accuracy, Processing Time, and general Fluid intelligence), as in earlier research, and revealed configural invariance across the age groups. However, the Processing Time factor showed different inter-factor correlations between younger and older adults. Results suggest that Processing Time played different roles in younger and older adults. The functional differences of the Processing Time factor in working memory across cognitive aging are discussed.

Felt understanding in intergroup context is the belief that members of an outgroup understand and accept ingroup members' perspectives. A series of studies in Europe recently conducted by Andrew Livingstone and colleagues showed the unique effect of felt understanding in intergroup relations. The effects were apparent even when controlling for outgroup beliefs and metabeliefs. The present article reports a cross-cultural replication of those findings for Japanese and Chinese relations in Japan. Consistent with the results of Livingstone and colleagues, felt understanding uniquely predicted intergroup outcomes (e.g., action intentions, outgroup trust, and intergroup orientation). The effects remained significant after adjusting for multiplicity with multiple variables. However, there were two differences. Felt understanding did not predict (a) negative approach intentions or (b) institutional trust.

The fear of spending time alone (isolation) may be closely related to dysfunction in decision-making. This study tested the prediction that people who strongly fear isolation have a reduced ability to think about social issues. The authors polled Japanese respondents via an online survey (N = 824). The results revealed that fear of isolation, measured by self-report, was negatively correlated with the ability to detect inappropriate agendas, inconsistent with a meeting's purpose. Additionally, fear of isolation was negatively correlated with a capacity to detect less relevant propositions addressing the causes of social issues and their solutions. These results showed that the more people feared isolation, the lower their ability to think about social issues. Based on these findings, the authors argue that fear of isolation is a good predictor of a lower ability for contemplating social issues.

People hesitate to seek help when they perceive the cost of helping as high. In general, help-seekers overestimate the cost of helping because of errors in perspective-taking. We examined whether three processes of mental simulation (recalling an experience of providing help, of rejecting a request for help, and of sensing the empathy gap) would decrease the cost of helping perceived by help-seekers. Participants underwent one of the simulations or no simulation (control condition), read two scenarios that described helping and help-seeking, and rated the perceived cost of helping in the scenarios. Contrary to the prediction, simulations did not decrease the cost of helping perceived by help-seekers. Recalling an experience of rejecting requests also increased the perceived cost of helping in unemployment scenarios. The post hoc analysis for controlling the depressive mood in depression scenarios showed that the cost of helping from the helper's perspective decreased, whereas that from the help-seekers remained the same under the empathy-gap simulation condition. These results suggest that realizing the asymmetry between helpers and help-seekers may be counterproductive in help-seeking and widen the empathy gap.

People have beliefs about the unacceptability of the expression and experience of negative emotions. These beliefs affect psychological health and can have a negative effect on the treatment and symptoms of people with mental disorders and medically unexplained symptoms. This study aimed to develop a Japanese version of the Beliefs about Emotions Scale (BES-J) and evaluate its reliability and validity. In an online survey, participants with fibromyalgia (n = 226) and healthy controls (n = 184) completed the BES-J and questionnaires concerning perfectionism, dysfunctional attitudes, depression, anxiety, pain, disability, well-being, interdependent happiness, and loneliness. The results of the principal component analysis showed that the BES-J comprised a one-factor structure, identical to the original. The BES-J had good internal consistency (.89) and showed a significant correlation with the questionnaires. The BES-J showed good internal reliability, concurrent validity, and test–retest reliability. The present study suggests that the Japanese version of the BES is appropriate for use with Japanese speakers.

Gratitude promotes prosocial behavior, but the developmental differences in the underlying motivation remain unclear. We investigated whether the effect of gratitude on prosocial behavior is driven by fairness or generosity motivations, and whether the underlying motivation differs by developmental stage. University students (Experiment 1) and elementary school children (Experiment 2) were assigned to either a gratitude or a neutral group. The former group recalled an event that elicited feelings of gratitude, while the latter group recalled a neutral event from their morning routine. Prosocial behavior was assessed using the three resource-allocation tasks that can distinguish between fairness and generosity motivations. In these tasks, the participants allocated rewards to themselves and another individual. The results indicate that the effect of gratitude on prosocial behavior is driven by generosity motivation in university students (Experiment 1), while it is driven by fairness motivation in elementary school children (Experiment 2). These results reveal developmental differences in the underlying motivation for gratitude on prosocial behavior.