Latent Profiles of Psychological “Being”: Uncovering the Structure of Sustained Mental States

There are numerous interrelated psychological constructs, such as well-being, emotional responses, self-perception, and interpersonal relationships, that reflect relatively sustained psychological states.While these domains have been extensively studied, their underlying structure and manifestation across cultures remain unclear.In this study, we introduce the concept of psychological being as a higher-order construct that integrates these domains into a cohesive framework.We examined individual and cultural variation in psychological being by comparing Japanese and American adults, which are populations with distinct socio-cultural norms 1.We first performed Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to identify latent psychological dimensions, followed by Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify common profiles.Importantly, we also conducted separate EFAs by culture, to reveal not only similar factor structures but also culture-specific variations.Method Data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) project 2 (age M = 46, SD = 13.0,48.0% male) 2 and Midlife in Japan (MIDJA) project 1 (age M = 54.4,SD = 14.1, 49.2% male) 3 were used, with participant consent for secondary use.They comprised 30 equivalent scales on wellbeing, life satisfaction, and self-control.After removing samples with missing values and standardizing the data, the datasets were merged (N=1,942, 997 from U.S. and 945 from Japan).EFA was performed with principal axis factoring and oblique rotation (Oblimin) on the merged data to identify shared dimensions, and separately on each dataset to explore cultural specificity.A four-factor structure solution was selected based on fit metrics.A total of eight variables from the merged EFA informed LPA using Gaussian Mixture Modeling (GMM) on a training/testing split (70/30) for a four-cluster solution with fixed orientation and varying variances and covariances with selection based on metrics including BIC. ResultsThe EFA on the merged data identified a four-factor structure explaining 61.1% of the variance.The four factors were interpreted as Negative emotionality (mean factor loading M = 0.86), Purpose & Growth (M = 0.79), Life satisfaction (M = 0.79), and Autonomy (M = 0.68).The separate EFAs revealed a similar four-factor structure (Table 1).However, while conceptually aligned, variable composition differed.For example, Purpose & Growth included self-esteem in the U.S. compared to generativity in Japan.LPA on the merged data revealed four profiles (Figure 1), named as distressed (16.1%), moderate (43.6%), fulfilled (21.4%), and satisfied (18.9%).Profiles were stable across datasets and broadly shared across cultures.Their distributions were similar between Japanese and U.S. populations for the distressed (15.8% vs. 16.4%) and moderate profiles (44.2% vs. 42.9%).The fulfilled profile was more common in the U.S. (23.8% vs. 18.9%), while the satisfied profile was more prevalent in Japan (21.1% vs. 16.9%).Profiles showed modest age differences, with mean ages ranging from 50 (distressed) to 58 years (satisfied).The fulfilled group reported the highest financial well-being, while the distressed group had fewer married individuals (54.9% vs. 70.6%mean).Gender distribution was similar across profiles.