Work Stressors and the Buffering Functions of the Sense of Control in the United States and Japan: A Test of the Diminished Buffering Hypothesis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the Stress Process Model, the sense of control is situated as a central psychosocial resource that buffers the effect of stressors on psychological distress. Although studies support this proposition, scholars have called for more research on whether buffering effects generalize across social contexts and groups. I address this call by examining cross-cultural differences in the sense of control’s buffering effects. Prior studies suggest that perceived control is a less important resource for well-being among individuals in collectivistic cultures compared with those in individualistic cultures. This has stimulated the diminished buffering hypothesis, which predicts weaker stress-buffering of perceived control among those in collectivistic cultures. This study tests this hypothesis using population-based data of Americans and Japanese, two groups that have been deemed quintessentially individualistic and collectivistic, respectively. Results show that across a set of five prominent work stressors, there are no differences in the stress-buffering functions of the sense of control between Americans and Japanese. These patterns pose questions about the view that sense of control is a less important resource for those in collectivistic cultures. As a stress-buffering resource, the sense of control appears to be just as important for Japanese as it is for Americans.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".