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Cross-cultural exploration of the Indecisiveness Scale:
A comparison of Chinese and American men and women
by
Steven M. Wengrovitz & Advisor: Professor Andrea Patalano
1. Introduction
Indecisiveness is the inability to make decisions in a timely manner across many
situations and domains (Frost & Shows, 1993). This construct has received
considerable research attention (Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995), and has been
found to correlate with numerous other personality measures. These include
self-esteem (Burka & Yuen, 1983; Ferrari, 1991; Ferrari, McCown, & Johnson,
1989), neuroticism (Jackson, Furnham, & Lawty-Jones, 1999; Milgram & Tenne,
2000), behavioral procrastination (Beswick, Rothblum, & Mann, 1988; Effert &
Ferrari, 1989; Ferrari, 1992; Ferrari & Emmons, 1994), obsessive-compulsive
tendencies (Frost & Shows, 1993; Gayton, Clavin, Clavin, & Broida, 1994),
hoarding behavior (Frost & Gross, 1993; Frost & Shows, 1993), perfectionism
(Frost & Shows, 1993; Gayton et al., 1994), and distractibility (Harriott,
Ferrari, & Dovidio, 1996).
Indecisiveness has also been found to predict
decision behaviors. Individuals high on indecisiveness take more time to choose
among alternatives (Frost & Shows, 1993), use less-exhaustive decision
strategies (Ferrari & Dovidio, 2000; Ferrari & Dovidio, 2001), require greater
cognitive effort to make decisions (Ferrari & Dovidio, 2001), are more
threatened by ambiguous situations (Rassin & Muris, 2005b), and are more likely
to postpone decision making (Rassin & Muris, 2005a; Veinott, 2002) as compared
with those low on indecisiveness. Indecisive individuals also have greater
difficulty choosing a college major (Gayton et al., 1994), choosing a career (Gati,
Krausz, & Osipow, 1996), and making other life decisions (Frost & Shows, 1993;
Germeijs & DeBoeck, 2002).
The most
comprehensive scale measure of indecisiveness is Frost and Shows’ (1993)
Indecisiveness Scale (but see also Mann, 1982). This self-report questionnaire
contains 15 items assessing difficulty, confidence, pleasure, anxiety,
procrastination, and regret surrounding decision making. Nine items are worded
negatively (e.g., “I try to put off making decisions”), and six positively
(e.g., “I find it easy making decisions”). Responses are typically elicited on
a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Highly agree) to 5 (Highly disagree),
with positive statements reverse coded so that low scores indicate high
indecisiveness. With American college-student samples, the internal reliability
of the scale is high (alpha range = 0.80 - 0.90; Frost & Gross, 1993; Frost &
Shows, 1993; Gayton et al., 1994). Frost and Shows’ Indecisiveness Scale has
been cited in nearly 100 articles in personality, clinical, educational,
industrial and consumer psychology.
Because Frost
and Shows’ (1993) Indecisiveness Scale was developed and has been used in
individualist Western cultural contexts, it is not known whether the scale is
appropriate, or the construct meaningful, in more collectivist East Asian
contexts (Hui & Triandis, 1985). Differences in decision making along this
cultural divide have been already found for confidence judgments
(e.g., Phillips & Wright, 1977; Yates, Lee,
Shinotsuka, Patalano, & Sieck, 1998), risk assessment (Weber & Hsee, 1998; Hsee
& Weber, 1999), and preferred decision-making style (Yates & Lee, 1996).
Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that it is universal for components of
indecisiveness, such as the relationship between effortful decision making and
negative emotion, to develop in across cultures. The primary goal of the
current work is to attempt cross-cultural validation of the Indecisiveness Scale
by comparing factor analytic structures for scale data collected in the United
States and China.
A second goal
is to explore cultural differences in indecisiveness. Self-esteem, a negative
correlate of indecisiveness (e.g., Ferrari, 1991), has been found to be higher
in the United States than in Japan and Hong Kong (Ip & Bond, 1995), suggesting
corresponding patterns of indecisiveness. This possibility is supported by a
preliminary small-sample study in which East Asian undergraduates studying in
the United States (n = 22) had higher average indecisiveness scores than
their American counterparts (Wengrovitz & Patalano, 2004; see also
Ji, Oka, & Yates, 2000).
However, given that the East Asian students were immersed in an unfamiliar
culture at the time of the study, the finding is speculative at best. The
question is important both for understanding cultural contributions to
indecisiveness, as well as for informing intercultural context in politics,
business, and other domains of public decision making.
A third and final goal is to explore gender
differences in distributions of indecisiveness scores. The Indecisiveness Scale
was developed using data from women (Frost & Shows, 1993), and was later
validated with a small sample of male undergraduates (Gayton et al., 1994). In
the only known gender comparison, Rassin and Muris (2005a) found Dutch
undergraduate women (n = 106) to be reliably more indecisive than men (n
= 29). The researchers anticipated these results given that women also have
higher levels of anxiety than men, which is related to indecisiveness (Craske,
2003). While not the focus of our interest, it is worthwhile to consider
whether or not this gender difference replicates with American and Chinese
undergraduate samples.
2. Method
2.1. Participants
Undergraduate
students from Capital Normal University in Beijing, China (73 men and 88 women)
and from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, United States (73 men and 88 women)
participated in this study. Capital Normal University students were born and
lived continuously in China, while Wesleyan students were born and lived
continuously in the United States; no Asian Americans were included in this
sample. Participant ages ranged from 18 to 26 years, though only 5 participants
were over 23 years old (mean age of Chinese men: M = 20.7, SD =
0.9; Chinese women: M = 20.4, SD = 1.4; American men: M =
20.6, SD = 1.3; American women: M = 20.2, SD = 1.2).
Participants were recruited through campus advertisements and were paid for
their participation in the study.
2.2.
Materials
The 15 items
from Frost and Shows’ (1993) Indecisiveness Scale (see Table 1) were mixed with
34 items from two unrelated scales. The resulting questionnaire was presented
in a single random order across two typed pages. Participants were instructed
to respond on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (Highly agree) to 5 (Highly
disagree).
For Chinese participants, the questionnaire was
translated from English to (Simplified) Chinese by a native Chinese speaker at
Capital Normal University. All materials were then back translated (see Brislin,
1980, 1986) by a native Chinese speaker at Wesleyan University to ensure proper
translation equivalence of the materials (see Berry,
Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002).
2.3. Procedure
Participants were run in
groups of 5 - 15 individuals in 1-h sessions. Participants completed the
questionnaire after a series of unrelated cognitive problems. They worked on
all tasks at their own pace. Average time to complete the questionnaire was
approximately 2 min.
3.
Results
Positive
scale items were reverse coded—so that low-numbered responses consistently
mapped onto high indecisiveness—before any analyses were conducted. Individual
participant scores were computed by averaging responses to the 15 items.1
Culture (American vs. Chinese) and gender (men vs. women) were used to create
four groups for analysis, except where otherwise noted.
3.1.
Scale reliability analysis
Cronbach’s alpha for inter-item reliability was computed separately for each
group. Reliabilities ranged from a
=.83 - .88, all above the conventional acceptability level of alpha > .70, and
consistent with past studies. Results for each group are shown in Table 2. For
each of the four groups, item analyses found that no items could be removed that
would result in an alpha increase of more than .002, and so no items were
candidates for removal.
3.2.
Scale factor analysis
Separate
factor analyses were conducted for American versus Chinese participants.
Results were not initially broken down by gender due to the large n
needed to ensure stable factor solutions. However, such analyses were run
post hoc and the results are reported later. Principal components analyses
were run using varimax (orthogonal) rotation. For each group, the number of
factors extracted was determined by (a) an examination of the scree plot, and
(b) retention of factors that accounted for approximately 50% of the total
variance in the data. As illustrated by the scree plots shown in Figures 1a and
b, the best solution yielded two factors for the American group (47% of
variance) and three factors for the Chinese group (51% of variance). A second
run using direct oblimin (oblique) rotation yielded similar results, with factor
correlations below .35, and so is not reported here.
The
factor loadings for scale items are shown in Tables 3 and 4. Items were grouped
by factor of highest loading, except in one case in which two loadings were
nearly the same and the second factor was conceptually more meaningful (Item 15
for the Chinese sample). For the American sample, the two factors are described
as General Indecisiveness (12 out of the 15 items, though Item 5 did not reach
our factor loading cutoff of .40; a
= .87) and Planning Indecisiveness (remaining Items 4, 13, and 14;
a = .63). For
the Chinese sample, the three factors are described as General
Indecisiveness–Anxiety (a 7-item subset of General Indecisiveness;
a = .79),
Planning Indecisiveness (again Items 4, 13, and 14;
a = .70), and
General Indecisiveness– Confidence (a 5-item subset of General Indecisiveness
using all remaining items; a
= .68). The labeling reflects the fact that the factor structures were the same
for the two groups except that the General Indecisiveness factor from the
American group was better explained by two factors for the Chinese group.
Additional
factor analyses were also run on men and women separately within each cultural
group. For Americans, the factor structure was the same for men and women, and
consistent with the overall within-culture model. The only factor-loading
deviations from the overall model were that Item 2 (“I always know exactly what
I want”) loaded on Planning Indecisiveness for men, and Item 5 (“I like to be in
a position to make decisions”) loaded on Planning Indecisiveness for women
(instead of General Indecisiveness in both cases). For Chinese, the factor
structure was also the same for men and women, and consistent with the overall
within-culture model. The only factor-loading deviation was that Item 2 loaded
on Planning Indecisiveness (instead of General Indecisiveness–Confidence) for
women.
Three factor
scores were computed for each participant by taking an average of responses to
scale items associated with the factor. The factor structure for the Chinese
sample was used in this situation because it subsumed American-sample factors.
This procedure allowed us to compare scores across cultures even though the
American group was best explained by only two factors. Within-culture factor
correlations are shown in Table 5. Although the correlations between factors
were .40 on average, it is interesting to note that the lowest correlation (r
= .28) was between General Indecisiveness–Anxiety and General
Indecisiveness–Confidence for the Chinese sample while, not surprisingly, these
two factors were most highly correlated for the American sample (r =
.69), consistent with the factor analyses.
3.4.
Summary score comparison
Median scores
(including interquartile range and highest and lowest scores) for culture by
gender groups are illustrated by boxplots in Figure 2, and mean scores
(including standard deviations) for the same groups are reported in Table 6. A
2 x 2 between-subjects ANOVA revealed no reliable effect of culture (F(1,318)
= 0.33, p = .565), gender (F(1,318) = 0.02, p = .887) or
interaction (F(1,318) = 1.20, p = .274).
Table 7
reports score means for each culture by gender subgroup for each of the three
Chinese factors. For the first factor, General Indecisiveness–Anxiety, there
were no significant differences (p’s > .500). For the second
factor, Planning Indecisiveness, we found main effects of culture (F(1,318)
= 33.34, p < .001) and gender (F(1,318) = 11.95, p = .001),
and an interaction (F(1,318) = 7.90, p = .005); Chinese
participants reported greater difficulty planning than Americans (Cohen’s d
= .79) and this was most pronounced for Chinese men (Cohen’s d for gender
effect = -.37). For the third factor, General Indecisiveness– Confidence, there
was main effect of culture only (F(1,318) = 6.85, p = .009; gender
and interaction p’s > .350). Specifically, though the mean difference
between cultures was small (Cohen’s d = -.28), Chinese participants
found decision making less effortful and reported more confidence in their
decisions than their American counterparts.
4.
Discussion
4.1. Scale
reliability summary
Across cultural and gender groups, the scale was
reliable at alpha levels from .80 - .90, consistent with past work (Frost &
Gross, 1993; Frost & Shows, 1993; Gayton et al., 1994), and no individual items
were candidates for deletion based on alpha score with item removed. The
results provide further evidence of the inter-item reliability of this scale for
men and women in the United States, and new evidence for inter-item reliability
for men and women in China.
4.2.
Cultural differences in factor structure
For American men and women, the factor analysis
yielded a two-factor structure, with one factor reflecting a general belief
about one’s decision making skills – including anxiety, ease, pleasure, and
confidence – and capturing much of what is typically meant by indecisiveness, as
well as a second, narrower factor. This second factor was labeled “Planning
Indecisiveness” here to reflect that all three associated scale items involve
planning. However, a different possibility is that the factor captures
self-knowledge derived from episodic memories (see Klein & Loftus, 1990, for
sources of self knowledge) as opposed to more general self-perceptions. Yet
another possibility is that it reflects a differentiation between less and more
consequential decisions (e.g., order of assignment completion vs. career path
selection). Future work might include developing unambiguous questionnaire
items on these themes (e.g., an item clearly tapping the dimension of decision
importance), as well as tapping other populations (e.g., older adults who might
not have recent episodic memories of completing “assignments”) to differentiate
among these possibilities.
For Chinese
men and women, the analysis yielded a three-factor structure, identical to the
two-factor structure found in the American sample except that the “General
Indecisiveness” factor divided into two narrower factors reflecting anxiety and
worry surrounding decision making versus pleasure and confidence in decision
making. There are many plausible reasons for this difference between Chinese
and American individuals. One speculation is that, for Americans, anxiety
during decision making produces negative affect which gives rise to difficulty,
displeasure, and low confidence. For Chinese, confidence and pleasure derive
from a source other than the emotional experience, such as from reflection on
the soundness on the decision process, or from the ability to generate reasons
in support of the choice (e.g., Yates, Lee & Shinotsuka, 1996). Another
possibility is that, if different cognitive strategies dominate decision making
in different cultures (e.g., rule use versus exemplar-based reasoning;
Norenzayan, Smith, Kim & Nisbett, 2002), anxiety during decision making might
negatively impact choice to a greater extent for American as compared with
Chinese individuals (see Ferrari & Dovidio, 2001). Future work is needed to
explore these possibilities.
4.2.
Cultural differences in scores
Past
preliminary work suggested that Americans and Chinese might differ in
Indecisiveness Scale scores (Ji,
Oka, & Yates, 2000; Wengrovitz & Patalano, 2004). We found no
significant differences in the distributions of scores—neither central tendency
nor variability—across cultures. However, we did observe cross-cultural
differences on individual factors (when applying the three-factor structure to
both groups). Although the two groups did not differ on anxiety and worry
(consistent with similarities in the big-five personality factor of neuroticism
across cultures; Luk & Bond, 1993), Chinese individuals reported considerably
more difficulty planning free time, and while Americans reported less pleasure
and confidence during decision making. These findings suggest that levels of
some components of indecisiveness, such as those more directly tied to major
personality traits, might be more culturally invariant than others.
Past work of
Rassin and Muris (2005a) found that Dutch undergraduate women were more
indecisive than men, however there were only 29 men in the sample (and more than
three times as many women). As with culture, we found no evidence of
differences in the distributions of scale scores for undergraduate men versus
women in either the United States or China. For each of the three scale
factors, the only observed gender difference was that Chinese men reported
greater difficulty planning free time than Chinese women, possibly due to less
access to free time among Chinese men. It is possible that there is a
cross-cultural interaction between gender and culture, involving Dutch versus
other cultures, but we know of no obvious reason for this to be the case.
Conclusions
This work is
important in that it speaks to the nature of indecisiveness, to cultural
differences in decision making, and to the relevance of the scale across two
cultures. Based on it, we caution against general comparisons of indecisiveness
for cross-cultural research, and instead encourage a component-based approach.
Future attention should be paid to components of this construct, and to their
relationships with objectively measured decision behaviors, towards the goal of
further elucidating culturally sensitive versus culturally invariant
contributors to indecisiveness.
Author Note
Andrea L. Patalano and Steven M. Wengrovitz,
Department of Psychology.
This research
was partially supported by the Freeman Asian/Asian American Initiative
Fellowship, a Hughes Summer Fellowship, and a Davenport Scholarship, through
Wesleyan University. We thank Ping Fang, Xinxin Fang, and their colleagues at
Capital Normal University in Beijing for their assistance in conducting this
study. We thank Steven Stemler for advice with data analysis, and lab members
Rebecca Gould, Jessica Jacobson, and Ying Xiong for helpful discussions.
Footnote
1 We computed indecisiveness score
as the average of scale items, but it is also sometimes computed as a sum, such
as in Rassin and Muris (2005a).
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Table
1
Frost and Shows’ (1993) Indecisiveness Scale
1. I try to put off
making decisions.
2. I always know
exactly what I want.
3. I find it easy to
make decisions.
4. I have a hard time
planning my free time.
5. I like to be in a
position to make decisions.
6. Once I make a
decision, I feel fairly confident that it is a good one.
7. When ordering from a
menu, I usually find it difficult to decide what to get.
8. I usually make
decisions quickly.
9. Once I make a
decision, I stop worrying about it.
10. I become anxious when
making a decision.
11. I often worry about
making the wrong choice.
12. After I have chosen
or decided something, I often believe I’ve made the wrong choice or decision.
13. I do not get
assignments done on time because I cannot decide what to do first.
14. I have trouble
completing assignments because I cannot prioritize what is most important.
15. It seems that
deciding on the most trivial things takes me a long time.
Table 2
Cronbach’s Alphas for Indecisiveness Scale
Scores by Culture and Gender
Chinese American
Men .84
.85
Women .83
.88
Table 3
Principal Components and Loadings for American Sample
Component
1
2
General Indecisiveness
(33% of variance)
(03) I find it easy
to make
decisions.
.84 .19
(08) I usually make
decisions quickly.
.79 .07
(11) I often worry
about making the wrong choice.
.72 .23
(10) I become
anxious when making
decision. .71
.22
(15) Deciding on
the most trivial things takes me a long time.
.67 .21
(01) I try to put
off making
decisions.
.64 .22
(09) Once I make a
decision, I stop worrying about it.
.62 .13
(12) [After
choosing,] I often believe I’ve made the wrong choice. .58
.25
(06) Once I make a
decision, I feel fairly confident that it is a good one.
.57 .19
(02) I always know
exactly what I want.
.48
-.04
(07) [With menu] I
usually find it difficult to decide what to get.
.47 .05
(05) I like to be
in a position to make
decisions. .33 .28
Planning
Indecisiveness
(14%)
(14) I cannot
prioritize what is most important [among assignments].
.08 .87
(13) I cannot
decide what to do first [among assignments].
.06 .81
(04) I have a hard time
planning my free time.
.26 .51
Table 4
Principal
Components and Loadings for Chinese Sample
Component
1 2 3
General
Indecisiveness–Anxiety (20% of variance)
(11) I often worry
about making the wrong choice.
.73 .24 .09
(12) [After
choosing,] I often believe I’ve made the wrong choice. .71
.20 .29
(07) [With menu] I
usually find it difficult to decide what to get. .65
.05 -.04
(09) Once I make a
decision, I stop worrying about it.
.60 .01 .23
(01) I try to put
off making
decisions.
.59 .17 .18
(10) I become
anxious when making
decision. .51
.20 .16
(15) Deciding on
the most trivial things takes me a long time.
.52 .55 -.11
Planning Indecisiveness
(16%)
(14) I cannot
prioritize what is most important [among assignments].
.07 .81 .11
(13) I cannot
decide what to do first [among assignments].
.18 .76 .16
(04) I have a hard
time planning my free
time. .23
.63 -.07
General Indecisiveness–Confidence
(15%)
(03) I find it easy
to make
decisions.
.18 -.06 .76
(06) Once I make a
decision, I feel fairly confident that it is a good one. .08
.21 .67
(05) I like to be
in a position to make
decisions. .14
.03 .61
(08) I usually make
decisions
quickly.
.50 -.05 .60
(02) I always know
exactly what I
want.
-.04 .47 .47
Table 5
Factor Correlations for Three (Chinese Structure) Components by Culture Only
General–Anxiety
Planning General–Confidence
General–Anxiety 1.00
.45 .28
Planning .40
1.00 .45
General–Confidence
.69 .35 1.00
Notes. Results for Americans are below diagonal;
results for Chinese are above it.
All correlations are significant at p < .001.
Table 6
Means for Indecisiveness Scale Scores by Culture and Gender
American Chinese
Men 3.3 (.63) 3.2
(.61)
Women 3.3 (.71) 3.3 (.54)
Note: Standard deviations
are in parentheses.
Table 7
Means for Indecisiveness Scale Three (Chinese
Structure) Factors by Culture and Gender
Component Label
General–Anxiety Planning General–Confidence
American
Men (n = 73) 3.1
(.81) 4.2 (.62) 3.1 (.78)
Women (n = 88) 3.0
(.85) 4.2 (.82) 3.0 (.81)
Combined 3.1
(.83) 4.2 (.73) 3.0 (.80)
Chinese
Men (n = 73) 3.1
(.77) 3.4 (.92) 3.3 (.65)
Women (n =88) 3.1
(.69) 4.0 (.68) 3.2 (.67)
Combined 3.1
(.72) 3.7 (.84) 3.2 (.66)
Note: Standard deviations
are in parentheses.
Figure Captions
Figure 1. Scree plot for
(a) American and (b) Chinese components. Line represents cutoff for factor
extraction for each sample (approximately 50% of variance for each sample is
accounted for by components above the lines).
Figure 2. Boxplots of
Indecisiveness Scale scores for American and Chinese male and female samples.
Figure 1a
Figure 1b
Figure 2
 
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