Views of Japanese and American Children Concerning Stressful Experiences

Abstract

Summary An earlier study of American children's ratings of 20 upsetting life events was replicated in Tokyo with 248 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. The Japanese children were also found to make distinguishing judgments of the perceived stressfulness, which bore little general relationship with their sex, grade, or experience. There were striking similarities in Japanese and American children's ratings (r, .91 for the scale values, .80 for Q values), even though the incidences of individual events were quite divergent. In terms of the total number, as well as of the cumulative stress value, of the events experienced by individual children, cultural differences were not statistically significant. Regardless of culture, grade variations indicated that the older children experienced more events and more stress. Significant sex differences were detected only in Japan, which suggest that the boys were under more pressure than the girls.