This study examined factors that influenced weight and body shape concerns in Japanese female young adults. A questionnaire was administered to 1,005 female undergraduates, which assessed: their eagerness and behavior to be thin; dissatisfaction with their body; child-rearing behavior of their parents; past experience of comment and teasing about their weight and body shape; mass media influence; and importance of being thin for themselves, among family members, and among friends. Results indicated that experience of comment and teasing influenced both importance of being thin and body dissatisfaction. Eagerness to be thin was explained by importance of being thin, mass media influence, and the importance among friends. As for parental behavior, paternal overprotection led to less dissatisfaction with their body. Parental caring and maternal overprotection did not significantly contribute to the model. These results suggested that weight and body shape concerns in Japanese young women were influenced more by importance of being thin for themselves and among friends, and mass media than parental behavior.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among variables of empathy arousing process, affective outcome, and trait empathy, and to examine the roles of target sex and psychological overlap as measured with Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale. Measures of empathy arousing process and affective outcome were developed from the responses of female undergraduate and graduate students to two film stimuli. Results showed that affective outcome variables were explained significantly by empathy arousing process variables: parallel affective response was explained by automatic empathy, and other-oriented response by automatic empathy and role-taking. Trait empathy, conceptualized with four dimensions, explained not only affective outcome variables, but also empathy arousing process variables. Both empathy arousing process and affective outcome variables were high when representations of the self and the protagonist of the film overlapped, and low when they did not. But protagonist sex had no effect on the variables.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale to measure attachment to parents, and to examine the role of the attachment in adjustment to transitional stress. Brennan, Clark & Shaver (1998) proposed two attachment facets of anxiety and avoidance, and in this study, a scale intended to tap the two toward parents was constructed. In Study 1, attachment to parents, self-acceptance, and parent-child relationship were examined. Factor analysis revealed two factors in the attachment: Anxiety to Attachment and Avoidance of Attachment. Two subscales corresponding to the factors showed good reliability and validity. In Study 2, the role of the attachment in social environmental adjustment was examined through a short-term longitudinal study, focusing on school transition. Attachment to parents, self-esteem, loneliness, and college life anxiety of first-year students were measured. Results revealed that those high on Anxiety to Attachment showed larger increases in loneliness and apprehension toward interpersonal relationship between two time periods than the low. The findings suggested that those who were low on the Anxiety were able to cope better with stress arising from loneliness and apprehension toward interpersonal relationship.

View full abstract

In Study 1, 23 pupils nominated by their teachers as seriously aggressive were assigned to criterion group, and 567 non-aggressive to contrast group. They were among 1701 third to sixth grade pupils at eight elementary schools with 59 teachers. A problem-aggression scale was constructed, with 13 items that best discriminated the two groups. In Study 2, teachers rated aggressiveness of their pupils with a 5-point scale. Participants were 224 third to sixth grade pupils and eight teachers. Reliability of the teacher ratings was .93. The problem-aggression scale had a correlation of .46 with the ratings, and its test-retest reliability coefficient was .85. Measurement accuracy was high on the higher end of the scale when data of 814 pupils were analyzed with IRT. In Study 3, intervention with assertiveness training was experimentally examined. Thirty-eight and 35 pupils in the third grade were assigned to experimental and control groups, respectively. Assertiveness training had a weak therapeutic effect on the low aggressive pupils when a 3-way ANOVA was performed on the pre- and post-intervention scores.

View full abstract

In Study 1, state anxiety of socially anxious people, compared to non-anxious people, was examined in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and face-to-face communication (FTF). In Study 2, factors that potentially influenced the occurrence of state communication anxiety: self-presentation efficacy, public and private self-awareness, state self-esteem, feeling of rejection, and relationship cognition, were examined to find out whether they were different between CMC and FTF. Results indicated that although state anxiety in CMC was lower than that in FTF, socially anxious people felt higher state anxiety than non-anxious people, and regarded relationship with others as negative, in both communication situations. Based on the findings, social anxiety as an early warning system and its conceptualization of perceived relationship with others were discussed.

View full abstract

Ego experience is defined as an incidence of asking questions about “I”, such as “Why am I the person I am?” and “Where have I come from?” In this paper, we report the research on the relationship between self-consciousness and ego experience. A questionnaire was administered to 239 junior high school and 228 college students. Results showed that 118 of the junior high school students (49.4%) reported ego experience, while 108 of undergraguates (47.4%) did the same. Public and private self-consciousness of junior high school students were not yet sufficiently differentiated. However, those who reported own ego experience had them more differentiated than those who did not, with a lower correlation between them. Also, both public and private self-consciousness related to ego experience in junior high school students. In contrast, only private self-consciousness of undergraduates related to ego experience.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine validity of Normal Dissociation Scale—short form (six items), and Normal Splitting-Projection Scale—short form (eight items). Three hundred and twenty five (325) undergraduates, with a mean age of 19.5 years, completed a questionnaire of Normal Dissociation Scale, Normal Splitting-Projection Scale, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and Dissociative Experience Scale, which consisted of Normal Dissociative Index (NDI) and DES–T. Normal Dissociation Scale showed a high correlation with NDI, a moderate correlation with DES–T, and a low correlation with GHQ. The results indicated discriminant and convergent validity of the scale. On the other hand, Normal Splitting-Projection Scale showed moderate correlations with GHQ, NDI, and DES–T, and a high correlation with Normal Dissociation Scale. Therefore, the scale did not show good discriminant validity. Further research is necessary to improve Normal Splitting-Projection Scale.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop Revised Interpersonal Intolerance of Ambiguity Scale (IIAS-R), which assessed the tendency with subscales for three types of people: first-time stranger, not-well-acquainted, and friend. Items for the scales were collected from self-report responses to an open-ended questionnaire. Scores for each subscale appeared to distribute normally. Internal consistency of the subscales was sufficiently high. Correlation coefficients between IIAS-R and social anxiety and dogmatism scales ranged from .52 to .22, which were statistically significant. Three-month test-retest reliability coefficients of the three subscales were .73, .70, and .66, respectively. The results demonstrated that the scale had good reliability and validity.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to construct a short form of Five Factor Personality Questionnaire (FFPQ; Tsuji et al., 2002). FFPQ is a 150-item questionnaire that measures five super traits: Extraversion, Attachment, Controlling, Emotionality, and Playfulness. Each super trait consists of five component traits. Fifty items (FFPQ–50) carefully chosen from FFPQ to keep its hierarchical structure were administered, with a 5-point rating format, to 900 undergraduates, 525 women and 375 men. Principal component analysis was performed on the data, and five factors were extracted. The Varimax-rotated solution with principal factor analysis showed a simple structure and alpha coefficients for the super traits were sufficiently high, ranging from .74 to .84. Furthermore, FFPQ–50 showed concurrent validity with Tokyo University Egogram (TEG) and was able to describe the personality characteristics of music students as distinctively as FFPQ. The results were discussed from the viewpoint of the usefulness of a short form with the hierarchical structure.

View full abstract

The aim of this study was to examine personality characteristics of women's college students with a tendency toward eating disorder using MMPI. Results showed that those with the tendency were significantly higher on 11 clinical scales than those who did not. Those with the tendency were not very high on Scale 4, psychopathy scale that indicates lack of self-control and impulsiveness, and not low on Scale 5, masculinity-femininity scale that indicates activity and self-assertion. Therefore, they did not show passive-aggressiveness that eating disorder patients normally manifested. It was suggested that with not so high psychopathy (Scale 4), they could put over-eating and vomiting under control, and because they did not show passive-aggressiveness, they could express their feelings and emotions relatively clearly. For these reasons, although they had the tendency, they might not have developed eating disorders.

View full abstract

In Study 1, Japanese version of the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP) was developed and its psychometric properties examined. Reliability of the 8 simple-scale scores, pattern of intercorrelations among them, and reliability of the 8 ipsatized scores were all comparable to their counterparts in the original IIP. The hypothesized circumplex model was fitted to the 8 ipsatized scores and it was found that the circumplex structure was held, at least in the ordinal sense. In Study 2, interviews with 6 persons were conducted to examine how the Japanese version IIP described their interpersonal problems. The IIP, especially its circumplex profiles, seemed to successfully capture and delineate the features of interpersonal problems that were just fragmentarily told or indicated in the interviews. In future research, improvement of the inventory items and application of the scales to actual counseling situations to examine their merits are expected.

View full abstract