EAPSI: Cross-cultural differences in maximizing tendencies and well-being

最大化者采用一种决策策略，他们试图在给定的一组选项中选择最优选择。相比之下，满足者会在一组选项中搜索，并选择一个被认为“足够好”的选项。在许多研究中，最大化倾向与生活满意度、乐观主义和积极情绪负相关，与遗憾和消极情绪正相关。然而，研究人员还没有探索这种倾向最大化在友谊选择领域。为了探索这一领域，最近开发的一份调查问卷将被翻译成日语，分发给日本北海道大学的学生，以衡量美国大学生的这一趋势。这项研究将在北海道大学与跨文化心理学专家Yuki Masaki教授合作进行。这项研究的目的是提高我们对选择朋友的最大化倾向与幸福感之间的关系的理解，以及这种倾向在不同文化中的差异。本提案旨在从两个方面扩展这一研究领域。一是研究最大化的一个新领域，即友谊选择。第二，社会生态的一个特定方面，即关系流动性，将被视为一个潜在的调节变量。关系流动性可以被定义为一个人在特定社会中进出社会关系的容易程度。研究表明，美国的关系流动性往往高于日本。因此，在美国和日本，选择朋友时倾向于最大化与幸福感是负相关的，但这种最大化的负面后果对美国高关系流动性社会中个人的幸福感更为有害。NSF EAPSI奖是与日本科学促进会合作资助的。

Maximizers employ a decision-making strategy in which they attempt to select the optimal choice in a given set of options. In contrast, satisficers search through a set of options and will select a choice that is deemed "good enough." In many studies, the tendency to maximize has related negatively to life satisfaction, optimism, and positive emotions and positively to regret and negative emotions. However, researchers have not explored this tendency to maximize in the domain of friendship selections. To explore this area, a recently developed questionnaire to measure this tendency in American undergraduates will be translated into Japanese and distributed to students at the Hokkaido University in Japan. This research will be conducted at Hokkaido University in collaboration with Professor Masaki Yuki, an expert in cross-cultural psychology. The goal of this study is to improve our understanding of how the tendency to maximize in selecting friends relates to well-being and how this might vary across cultures. The present proposal aims to expand on this area of research in two ways. One, a new domain of maximizing will be examined, namely friendship selections. Two, a particular aspect of the social ecology, namely relational mobility, will be considered as a potential moderating variable. Relational mobility can be defined as the ease in which one can move in and out of social relationships within a particular society. Research has shown that relational mobility tends to be higher in the United States than Japan. Thus, the tendency to maximize in selecting friends would relate negatively to well-being in both the United States and Japan, but this negative consequence of maximizing would be even more detrimental to the well-being of individuals in societies of high relational mobility in the United States. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.