Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic clearly shows, we are living in an age of uncertainty and ambiguity. This study develops a Japanese version of the Multidimensional Attitude toward Ambiguity Scale (MAAS), which was originally developed by Lauriola et al. (2016) and has better psychometrics and reproducibility than previously developed personality trait scales for ambiguity. It assesses three factors: discomfort with ambiguity, moral absolutism/splitting, and need for complexity and novelty. To test our newly developed MAAS, we asked 347 participants (147 females and 200 males, =39.07, =10.58) to complete a back-translated Japanese version of the MAAS online. The Japanese version was found to have sufficient or good internal consistency, retest reliability, and construct validity. We newly found that there were correlations between attitudes toward ambiguity and several scales (e.g., subscales of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and the Minimalist Well-Being Scale), and that there are differences in the scores of our Japanese study participants and the Italian samples in the literature. We hope that our Japanese version of the MAAS will be actively used in future cross-cultural comparative research.
Highlights
This study develops a Japanese version of the Multidimensional Attitude toward Ambiguity Scale (MAAS), which was originally developed by Lauriola et al (2016) and has better psychometrics and reproducibility than previously developed personality trait scales for ambiguity
We examined the model fit and factor loadings for the 20 items that were deleted from the original MAAS, but there was no significant difference in the values
Since we believe that a scale which is faithful to the original version is more useful for cross-cultural comparisons, we analyzed the 21-item MAAS-J because it is considered to have the same structure as the original version
Summary
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding the spread of the virus via misinformation and confusing, contradic-. It has demonstrated the need to examine the psychological mechanisms behind people’s responses to ambiguity and uncertainty (Salvi et al, 2021). We examine how these mechanisms have been studied in the literature to give some background for this study’s development and validation of a Japanese version of the Multidimensional Attitude toward Ambiguity Scale (MAAS)
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