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Ambivalence over emotional expression and symptom attribution are associated with self‐reported somatic symptoms in S ingaporean school adolescents
Author(s) -
Lee BoonOoi
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/ajsp.12005
Subject(s) - somatization , attribution , psychology , ambivalence , distress , psychopathology , context (archaeology) , emotional expression , expression (computer science) , developmental psychology , emotional distress , anxiety , clinical psychology , social psychology , psychiatry , computer science , programming language , paleontology , biology
Although somatization is common across cultures, its meanings may differ as culture shapes emotional experience. Thus, instead of treating somatization as a form of psychopathology, it is more useful to conceptualize it as an idiom of distress, and how complaints of somatic symptoms are related to social relationships, patterns of emotional expression and symptom attribution in a cultural context. This study seeks to explore whether ambivalence over emotional expression and causal attribution would shed light on the meanings of somatization among A sian adolescents. Three hundred secondary school adolescents in S ingapore participated in this study. The main results show that emotional ambivalence, biomedical and T raditional C hinese Medicinal causal beliefs, and magical attribution contributed to additional variance in somatic symptoms over and above the variance explained by emotional distress. These findings are discussed from both psychological and cultural perspectives.