中年期における文化的自己観とソーシャル・サポート要請の関係についてー感情に着目してー

Previous research has suggested that especially middle-aged Japanese people are less likely to seek social support compared to Americans. Japanese emphasize a construal of self that is interdependent with others. By contrast, Americans have a strong belief in the independence of the self. Such cultural construal of the self shapes the nature of psychological processes, such as emotions. It has also been suggested that people who receive help feel more indebted, because they are obligated to reciprocate the favors that are received. We hypothesized that engaged negative emotions that are involved in the interdependent self construal, would induce indebtedness, and restrain people from social support seeking. A questionnaire survey was conducted with middle-aged people in Japan (N = 385: Mean age, 48 years, SD = 5.39). Results confirmed that social support seeking was affected by the cultural self construal through negative emotions: (1) The more interdependent a person\u27s self construal was, the more engaged were negative emotions. (2) The more engaged a person\u27s negative emotions were, higher was indebtedness after receiving help on issues related to children. (3) The more indebted a person was, less was the tendency to seek social support for issues related to children