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?

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 USJapanese 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.

Concerns Involving the Self: What Is the Real Target of Anxiety, Regret, or Worry, When Things Do Not Go Right for You? More Evidence from Sweden and the United States

“…Confirmatory factor analyses were carried out that included these attributes. Among the many psychological inner latent factors, the same inner latent factor "Being unable to detach from concerns involving the self" was extracted, as in the earlier report (Hayase, 2016). The present study examines the important factors related to the themes "Real happiness which is independent of any episode" and "What do you do when you find that things are finally and certainly not going right for you?…”

“…It is well known that many substantial cultural variations exist between independent (e.g., Euro-American) and interdependent (e.g., Asian) cultures (Uchida et al, 2004;Uchida et al, 2008;Uchida et al, 2009). A Swedish sample was selected to represent an independent culture and to contrast effectively with the former Japanese sample that represented an interdependent culture (Hayase, 2016). A total of 1049 Swedish respondents (517 men and 532 women; average age 45.1 years, standard deviation 14.4) participated.…”

“…This is an important problem, and it is significant to investigate and solve it in order to discover and clarify the circumstances of true happiness, not merely episodic happiness (Raibley, 2012). An Internet survey about people's mental constructs related to happiness was previously conducted on adults in Japan and adults in the US who self-identified as White, as reported in Hayase (2016). The present study reports a similar survey administered to adults in Sweden and to adults in the US who self-identified as Black.…”

“…The present study reports a similar survey administered to adults in Sweden and to adults in the US who self-identified as Black. The questionnaire included the same eighty psychological and philosophical questions and four demographic questions about gender, age, education, and income that were used by Hayase (2016). In an exploratory analysis, many psychological latent factors were extracted from the eighty questions.…”

“…which was identified in an earlier study of the US and Japan (Hayase, 2016) by providing new statistical data from Sweden and the US; and 3) to examine the concept of "genuine happiness," which differs from the episodic happiness deriving from unstable episodes.…”