Alexithymia refers to a psychological deficit of identifying and describing one’s feelings. It has benn reported that the level of alexithymia of East-Asians is generally higher than that of Western Europeans. Recently one research conducted in U.S. suggested that the interdependent self-construal from East-Asians’ collectivism culture might be a cause of this cross-cultural difference. In the current study, we examined the relationship between the level of independent and interdependent self-construal of Korean college students and their level of alexithymia, as well as their ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and emotion suppression. The correlation analysis shows that the Korean students’ alexithymia level does not correlate with their level of interdependent self-construal, but negatively correlates with their level of independent self-construal. Moreover, it is also correlated with the level of ambivalence over emotional expressiveness(AEE) and emotion suppression(ES). Thus, we setup a double-mediation model between the deficiency of independent self-construal and alexithymia via AEE and ES, and estimate mediation effects using Hayes and Preacher(2014)s’ Process analysis. The results show that the deficiency of independent self-construal has a direct effect as well as indirect effects of AEE and ES on the alexithymia level. Further analysis on the indirect effects reveals that the mediation effect of AEE and the double mediation effect of ES via AEE are significant, but the mediation effect of ES is not significant. Current results imply that the interdependent self-construal from the traditional collectivistic culture may not cause Korean college students’ problems on the emotional expression, but the relatively lower independent self-construal may cause them. The deficiency of independent self-constural may raise up the level of self-defensive ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and suppress emotional expression by themselves, which can result in alexithymia.
There have been many efforts to reduce prejudice and discrimination against people with mental illness in our community. Studies have shown that the threat to people with mental illness is a important factor. In this study, we focused on contact experience and sense of community that are believed to influence both realistic and symbolic threat We looked the differences in threat depending on the type of contact(family, friends/coworker, public places, no contact) with people with mental illness. Next, if there is contact experience, we questioned that the quality of the experience could influence the threats in all types of contact. Finally, could contact experience and sense of community affect the threats? The total of 465 respondents were surveyed in this study. The result showed that the realistic threat were not different depending on the types of contact, but that the symbolic threat were more higher people with no-contact experience than people with contact experience. The quality of experience had a significant effect on both threats, except in the case of the family contact on realistic threat. Lastly, sense of community was analyzed as a significant variable for both realistic and symbolic threats. Based on these results, we discussed the impact of contact and sense of community and implications of this study.
The present study investigated the relationships between autistic trait and socio-moral judgments. We used Autism Spectrum Quotient, a moral judgment task in which participants needed to consider both the intention and outcomes of a person’s actions, a moral judgment task in which participants were asked to evaluate a person’s utilitarian choices in moral dilemmas, and Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Autistic traits were negatively correlated with blame for failed attempts to harm others, suggesting that higher autistic traits were associated with difficulty in considering intentions in moral judgments. Also, higher autistic traits were associated with higher endorsement of utilitarian option on personal moral dilemmas, and lower endorsement for no-harm principle of moral foundations. These correlations were confirmed as group differences between high autistic-trait group (AQ >= 26) and a low autistic-trait group (AQ < 26). Our findings suggest that individuals with high autistic trait may have difficulty in considering others’ intentions and show lower sensitivity to no-harm principle in moral judgment tasks.
In Study 1, the author translated the material which is modified by Han(2017) and allows researchers to examine misinformation effect about background (temporal structure of event) and object information. Eighty-five Korean participants were participated in Study 1 and tested their memory after misled by temporal and object post-event information about a story. The translated material could produce misinformation effect in both types of information. In Study 2, a 3-way ANOVA was conducted with combined data collected from Korea and the U.S to test the effects of three IVs (whether misled or not, the type of information and the nationality of the participants) on memory after misled by temporal and object information. As results, the main effects of all three IVs, the 2-way interaction effect of whether misled or not and the type of information, and the 3-way interaction effect of all the three IVs were statistically significant. In sum, the higher accuracy rate was obtained when the participants were not misled, and they were more accurate about the information about object. Americans tended to be more accurate. The misinformation effect was larger when the participants were misled by object information. The 2-way interaction effect was found only in the Korean sample. In the discussion, the implication of the current study was discussed.