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Cultural influences in somatosensory amplification and their association with negative affective states
Author(s) -
Ishii Keiko
Publication year - 2019
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.12342
Subject(s) - neuroticism , somatosensory system , psychology , association (psychology) , mediation , confounding , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , medicine , personality , psychiatry , social psychology , political science , law , psychotherapist
Previous research has indicated that, reflecting East Asians’ holistic attentional style, they are likely to emphasize more somatic symptoms and perceive their internal visceral states less accurately as compared with Westerners. Based on these findings, comparing representative samples of Americans and Japanese participants, this research examined whether somatosensory amplification would vary across cultures. Moreover, by controlling confounding factors, including neuroticism and chronic disorders, the possibility that the association between somatosensory amplification and negative affective states differs across cultures also was tested. The results showed that Japanese exhibit higher somatosensory amplification than do Americans. In both cultures, as neuroticism and the number of chronic disorders increased, negative affective states also increased, leading to higher somatosensory amplification. Whereas negative affective states completely mediated the paths of neuroticism and chronic disorders to somatosensory amplification in the United States , such mediation was partial in Japan. Moreover, the association between somatosensory amplification and negative affective states was weaker in Japanese than in Americans.