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 US- Japanese 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.