• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.239-268
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• 2004

This study examined the role of self-construals in marital satisfaction among men and women, and explored how independent and interdependent self-construals contribute to or undermine marital satisfaction. Data were drawn from a self-administered questionnaire study in which 489 married people(aged 25-75) residing in Seoul participated. Path analyses were conducted using Structural Equation Modeling Program, and a goodness of fit of the proposed path model was evaluated. As expected, the positive impact of independent self-construal on marital satisfaction was mediated by self-esteem and clarity of communication, and that of interdependent self-construal on marital satisfaction was mediated by psychological stability and a sense of relational well-being. The direct effects of these two types of self-construal on marital satisfaction were opposite. As predicted, independent self-construal decreased marital satisfaction, whereas interdependent self-construal increased it. All of the direct and indirect effects of independent and interdependent self-construals on marital satisfaction were statistically significant, except the indirect effect of interdependent self-construal as mediated by psychological stability. The goodness of fit indexes of the path model indicated that the model was acceptable. However, the results of separate path analyses for men and women showed that some of the effects of self-construals on marital satisfaction differed by gender. Based on these results, implications for clinical social work practice were discussed.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.387-397
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of emotional arousals of guilt versus shame on health message compliance. The study also investigates the moderation impact of two individual factors that have not been studied much in health communications, including regulatory focus and self-construal. This study employs a 2 (guilt versus shame appeals/arousals) between-subjects experiment and a survey to test the conceptual model. The context of the study is binge drinking, and the survey respondents (n = 330) are male university students in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The results confirm the positive effects of guilt and shame arousals on health message compliance. In addition, the results show moderating effects of the two individual characteristics of regulatory focus and self-construal on the relationships between guilt/shame arousals and health message compliance. The findings of this study have not only theoretical implications but also practical implications in the field of health communications. The insights could help health marketers, policymakers, and health promotion agencies to effectively develop health communications campaigns with more appealing message content (guilt versus shame) and relevant media selection (regulatory focus and self-construal).

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.149-168
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• 2014

This study investigates the effect of perceived risk on attitude toward mobile Social Network Services (SNSs). First, we understand that perceived risk of SNSs is a multidimensional concept, and we study the relationship between attitude and perceived risk such as social risk, performance risk, and privacy risk in SNS environments. Subsequently, the relationships between these multidimensional concepts of perceived risk and attitude are investigated. The result indicates that social, performance, and privacy risk have negative effects on attitude. In addition, the moderated effect of individual characteristic variables such as hedonic value and self-construal are confirmed as mitigating factors that alleviate the negative impact of perceived risk. The Findings show that customers who perceive SNSs to be risky are more likely to have a negative attitude toward SNSs. However, the negative impact of perceived risk on their attitude toward SNSs is alleviated in customers with high hedonic value. Similarly, the negative impact of perceived risk on their attitude toward SNS is weaker with customers in interdependent self-construal. This paper presents effective segmentation variables, such as consumer's motivation (hedonic value) and psychological variable (self-construal), which mitigate the risk perception of customers. Therefore, it provides practical guidelines for the marketing managers in terms of who to target and what kind of strategies to implement in terms of these segmentation variables to approach consumers more efficiently.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.45-53
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• 2017

Although much research has been conducted to identify the influence of culture on conflict management and resolution behaviours in organizational settings, no study has been done yet in the construction industry particularly in considering the influence of individual level individualistic and collectivistic values. Despite the key role of self-construal in explaining or predicting behaviour in interpersonal conflict, it has not received enough attention in construction management. Reflecting this necessity, the objective of this exploratory study was to establish, through the application of the Rahim Organizational Inventory (ROC II) instrument, how the cultural values of professionals of construction businesses relate to the application of different conflict-handling styles through self-construal. Data were collected using questionnaire surveys from construction professionals working in contracting firms. The findings illustrate the importance of self-construal type as an individual-level cultural variable in explaining the differences in the style of handling interpersonal conflict in the context of the construction industry.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.101-118
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• 2019

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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.760-777
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• 2023

Fashion brands seek guidelines for effective green advertising messages, considering benefit appeals, brand types, and construal level. However, few studies have explored their simultaneous interplay. Thus, the present study conducted an experiment with a 2X2X2 between-subjects design to investigate how brand type and construal level moderate the mediating role of ad-brand congruency between benefit appeals and purchase intention. A total of 245 Millennials and Generation Z participants completed an online survey, and the data were analyzed using SPSS. A significant three-way interaction was revealed. Low-construal-level messages with concrete content showed disparities between aspirational and accessible brands concerning other-benefit appeals: Accessible brands utilizing other-benefit appeals demonstrated higher ad-brand congruency, while aspirational brands had lower ad-brand congruency. Furthermore, within aspirational brands, self-benefit appeals resulted in higher ad-brand congruency than other-benefit appeals. Finally, a moderated mediating effect was discovered, indicating that brand types and construal level moderated the mediating effect of ad-brand congruency between benefit appeals and purchase intention. The mediating effect was prominent in the context of self-benefit appeals, aspirational brands, and low-construal-level messages. This study highlights the intricate dynamics of the three factors in green advertising, providing valuable insights for crafting more targeted green advertisements.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.7-15
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• 2014

Purpose - This study aims to explore the factors that can trigger the escalation of an initially pursued long-term utilitarian goal that is set aside to pursue a competing hedonic goal. Research Design, Data, and Methodology - The experimental study covered three groups : Group 1 (ego-depletion, self-referencing), Group 2 (ego-depletion, neutral), and Group 3 (no ego-depletion, neutral). The participants of the study comprised 150 undergraduates who were divided into three groups of 50 students for each. One-way ANOVA and regression analyses were used to verify the hypotheses. Results - Ego-depleted consumers are less likely to resist immediate temptation than those who are not in an ego-depletion state. Self-referencing has a positive impact on long-term goal reversion when consumers in an ego-depletion state experience immediate temptations. Counteractive construal plays a mediating role between self-referencing and long-term goal reversion. Conclusions - We found that consumers tend to yield to momentary temptations when they are in an ego-depletion state. Self-referencing and counteractive construal can eliminate the ego-depletion effect and then facilitates escalation of the set-aside long-term goal.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.193-222
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• 2010

This questionnaire study examined the processes linking complexity of self-construal to self-positivity conceptualized as taking multiple perspectives, self-acceptance and self-regulation that, in turn, affect psychological well-being among people with an experience of life-crisis during adulthood due to physical disability or divorce. Data were drawn from 359 adult Koreans residing in Seoul metropolitan area, including the physically disabled, the divorced, and their counterparts without a life-crisis experience during adulthood for comparison. On average, the life-crisis experience group(LEG) had a higher independent selfconstrual and a lower interdependent self-construal than the comparison group(CG). As predicted, complexity of self-construal contributed to taking multiple perspectives that helps searching for meaning, and this, in turn, was found to foster self-acceptance and self-regulation. Through these variables except self-regulation, complex self-construal contributed to psychological well-being as manifested by a higher level of positive emotion and a lower level of depression. As expected, while taking multiple perspectives fostered positive emotion both directly and indirectly through self-acceptance among LEG and CG, only in LEG it directly reduced depression. The comparative approach employed in this study enabled to discern that taking multiple perspectives promotes psychological well-being in LEG by contributing to both meaning making and positive attitude, whereas it promotes psychological well-being in CG primarily by fostering positive attitude. Finally implications for this study were discussed and directions for future research were suggested.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.475-483
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• 2017

This study attempted to investigate how the effectiveness of value-oriented promotion for media contents depends on self-construal and incorporated Schwartz' value system theory(1992) and Gutman's means-end chain theory(1982) into the development of hypotheses. It was expected that media content promotion emphasizing "openness to change" value would be more appealing to those with independent self-construal, whereas media content promotion emphasizing "conservation" value would be more appealing to those with interdependent self-construal. These hypotheses were generally supported in a series of experiments. Also, the dynamic relationship among the four primary value dimensions proposed by Schwartz (i.e., openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, self-transcendence) was clearly validated in this study.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.36
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• pp.423-462
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• 2006

This thesis explores the relationship between self-construal and online communication pattern. The Internet has changed human-to human communication. This study was to analyze how the self-construal was appeared and what relationship self-construal had with several variables: the motivation of the on-line community member, the on-line community's character, the communication behavior, the level of relationship between on-line community members- in on-line communities. The data was collected through the on-line survey research(N=79) and off-line survey research(N=255). The results lead us to conclude that the self-construals in on-line communities reflect two factors, which is similar to the off-line community. Nevertheless, self-construals in on-line communities are more complicated. In addition, uniqueness of self-construals which is the tendency to express the self and think connection with others critical is the important factor in on-line communities' communication. It is also central that the impact of self-construals on communication behavior is significant. I think this study was a small touch to explore cyber communication applying to self-consturals. And I hope this small touch would spread out and help to understand human communication as well as cyber communication.