Self-Rated Ability of Reading the Atmosphere and Correlated Factors Among College Students

Inarticulate understanding of someone’s needs and feelings accurately, and communicating with people smoothly is represented as “reading the atmosphere”, and it has been treasured in Japanese tradition.Recent young Japanese adults prefer being accommodating, and setting themselves apart from their peers can lead to worsening of their mental health. The present study was a questionnaire survey to examine factors that affect the self-rated ability to read the atmosphere for 703 students at two universities in 2011. Among them, 3.2% were self-rated as “cannot read the atmosphere at all (Group 1)”, 19.4% “cannot read the atmosphere very much (Group 2)”, 46.8% “can read the atmosphere a little (Group 3)”, 25.4% “can read the atmosphere very much (Group 4)”, and 5.3% “read the atmosphere too much (Group 5)”. Also, logistic regression analysis showed that the self-rated abilities of reading the atmosphere were not related to age, sex, and the presence or absence of siblings, and collectivism scale. However, they were significantly related to the self-monitoring scale. The results indicated that self-monitoring is a crucial factor for the proper functioning of abilities to read the atmosphere. Also, people read the atmosphere not because they put the priority of group goals over individual goals.