TITLE:
Concerns Involving the Self: What Is It That You Really Worry about, Regret, or Are Anxious about, When Things Do Not Go Right for You?
AUTHORS:
Kohji Hayase
KEYWORDS:
Inability to Detach, Concerns Involving the Self, Worry, Regret, Anxiety, Happiness
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.7 No.4,
April
28,
2016
ABSTRACT: In two
studies conducted in the US and Japan in 2012, more than 1000 respondents in
each country were asked to report their subjective opinions and attitudes about
situations that caused them regret, concern, worry, and anxiety. Although
exploratory factor analyses extracted many latent factors from the 80
questions, a common latent inner factor was extracted from five questions that
examined key psychological phenomena: worry at the present time, bothersome
concerns in the present, regret for the past, anxiety about the future, and
unpleasant experience in the past. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural
equation modeling of the latent variables (SEM/LV) provided convincing evidence
of the existence of the common latent inner factor in both countries. Because
each of the five key phenomena reflected concerns involving the self, the
common latent inner factor was labeled “Being unable to detach from concerns
involving the self.” The same latent inner factor was also confirmed in SEM/LV
of the combined US- Japanese data. Women, younger people, and people with lower
levels of education were less able to detach from concerns involving the self
than were men, older people, and people with higher levels of education. This
was true in the samples from both independent (US) and interdependent (Japan)
cultures. Psychological and philosophical implications of the latent inner
factor were discussed.