Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Investigating Gender And Age Difference Of Savoring Strategies Among Japanese Adults (#719)

Erika Miyakawa 1 , Paul E. Jose 2 , Fred B. Bryant 3 , Takashi Oguchi 4
  1. Graduate School of Contemporary Psychology, Rikkyo University, Saitama, Japan
  2. School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
  3. Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
  4. College of Contemporary Psychology, Rikkyo University, Saitama, Japan

This study aims to investigate the moderators of gender and age on the savoring strategies (Amplifying and Dampening) among Japanese adults. We collected 520 Japanese adults (260 males, 260 females) via an online survey. The participants ranged in age from 20 to 69 years (M = 44.36, SD = 14.0). Analyses identified a gender difference for the savoring strategies; females yielded higher scores on both strategies than did males. Regarding age differences, no significant linear effects, but a curvilinear effect was found for both subfactors. The obtained curves both showed an initial high level of both subscales and a decrease during middle adulthood. A difference was noted for older adults: they reported an increase in amplifying savoring, but stable diminished dampening savoring relative to other ages. This pattern is consistent with common findings that older adults report higher levels of subjective happiness than middle-aged and young adults (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2008; Ramsey & Gentzler, 2014). However, young adulthood showed relatively higher scores in both amplifying and dampening strategies. This implies that Japanese young adults may endorse amplifying and dampening savoring styles differently over age compare to other age adults.