Implicit theories of stress in two cultures, the Japanese and the Malaysian, were investigated on the basis of a questionnaire which consisted of 43 life events (Holmes and Rahe, 1967). 169 Malaysian and 200 Japanese university students were asked to rate the degree of stress they had experienced, and/or expected to experience, if the events have yet to happen. The results were: (1) Although implicit theories of stress varied from group to group and over time, similar structures of stress were found for all samples through the analysis of the Hayashi Third Method of Quantification: distress-eustress and hypostress-hyperstress. (2) The Malaysian of Chinese descent had an equally high correlation (0.81, the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient) with the Malaysian of Malay descent and with the Japanese. (3) The Japanese rated most of the life events higher than the Malaysian on a 7-point Likert scale.
Japanese Journal of Social Psychology 11 (1), 1-10, 1995
The Japanese Society of Social Psychology