Less Maladaptiveness of the Maladaptive Coping Styles in Japan than in Germany: Cross-cultural Comparison of Adaptive and Maladaptive Coping Styles

Abstract

The Maladaptive and Adaptive Coping Style Questionnaire (MAX) is a comprehensive tool for measuring coping styles including three subscales: maladaptive coping, adaptive coping, and avoidance. This study developed a Japanese version of MAX and evaluated the relationship between the coping styles and psychopathologies between the Japanese sample and the German sample. For the cross-cultural comparison, we used the Japanese community sample and German data set acquired by Moritz et al. (Journal of Affective Disorders 191:300–307, 2016). Factor analysis was conducted with the Japanese version of the MAX. Referring to the original version, we hypothesized the three-factor structure. However, the results showed that the adaptive coping subscale had less similarity to the original version, whereas the maladaptive coping and avoidance subscales were similar to the original. As the result of cultural comparison, the Japanese participants showed more maladaptive coping and avoidance. Moreover, the maladaptive coping styles had weaker correlations with the psychopathologies in the Japanese sample than with those in the German sample in the present study.