Research Interests
I have mainly specialized in psychology, particularly in clinical and social psychology, a field that lies at the boundary between clinical psychology and social psychology. Recently, I have also been conducting research from the perspective of social welfare studies.
1) Research on Depression
Since I was an undergraduate student in college, I have been interested in the issue of depression: why some people are easily depressed and others are not. Perhaps it was the fact that when I was young, I myself became easily depressed due to interpersonal failures. For my graduation thesis, I took up Higgins' self-disrepancy theory(Katsuya, 1998).
After entering graduate school, I investigated how depressed people perceive the evaluations of others (Katsuya, 2000). Rather than personality problems, I was particularly interested in the interpersonal model of depression (Coyne, 1976), which focuses on interpersonal relationships in which depressed people become more depressed when their relationships with friends, family, and other people important to them fail. During my graduate and post-doctoral years, I conducted research on “reassunrance-seeking “tendencies(Joiner, 1999) toward significant others (Katsuya, 2004; Katsuya, 2006; Katsuya, 2007), which is one of the characteristics of how people relate to significant others, and received my Ph.
Currently, I am also conducting research on social images related to depression. I asked students and working adults to write freely about their images of "typical depression" or “modern-type depression," and quantitatively analyzed the content of their descriptions using a text data analysis method called text mining to examine the characteristics of the descriptions. The results showed that the image of depression is shared to some extent in Japan, with descriptions related to the fact that it is a mental illness, causes, symptoms, and treatment, as well as descriptions related to its difficulty in being noticed, the fact that it can affect anyone, and that it affects young people (Katsuya, Oka, Sakamoto, Asakawa, and Yamamoto, 2011; Katsuya, Oka, and Sakamoto, 2018). I intend to conduct research that will lead to a better understanding of mental illness and mental disorders by examining the content and characteristics of images about mental illness held by the general public who are not experts in the field.
(2) Mental health and psychological support for people with hearing loss
My own experience of being diagnosed with hearing loss (see the Auditory Neuropathy page for more information) has led me to engage in psychological research on people with hearing loss for the past 10 years. A review of past research reveals that while there is some clinical psychological research on deaf people and people with severe hearing impairment, there is very little psychological research on people with mild and/or acquired hearing loss. Therefore, I decided to first engage in research from the standpoint of clinical psychology and social psychology, as a person with hearing loss myself.
So far, I have conducted research on the general image of "hearing loss" (Lay theory) (Katsuya, 2011), the relationship between stress and mental health in people with mild to moderate hearing loss (Katsuya, 2011), research on the effectiveness of a speech recognition writing board to support conversation for people with hearing loss (Katsuya, 2015), and stress management program (Katsuya, 2019), and a study to consider psychological support measures for people with hearing loss in mid-life (Katsuya, Kurita, and Nabata, 2016; Nabata, Nabata, Kurita, and Katsuya, 2019).
Stresses and psychological conflicts in daily life experienced by people with hearing loss vary greatly depending on their age, residual hearing ability, and the time of their hearing loss. Since the content and timing of necessary support differed for each, the importance of considering detailed support measures was considered. In addition, people who experience hearing loss in mid-life due to illness or aging experience a lot of stress in their daily lives because of their inability to hear and have trouble communicating. So far, I have conducted a survey of people with hearing loss to investigate the characteristics of stress related to hearing loss and how they cope with stress. Using a booklet of interviews with people with hearing loss as a teaching tool, I conducted workshops to help people understand the difficulties and stresses associated with hearing loss (Katsuya, 2019).
In addition, I have served as the representative of the "Association for Considering Psychological Issues of People with Hearing Loss," a study group of people with hearing loss and researchers of hearing loss, and have held workshops and symposia every year at psychology-related conferences to discuss how people with hearing loss should be understood and supported. The results of these workshops and symposiums are summarized in the book "Psychology of People with Hearing Loss and Hearing Impairment" published by Kamogawa Publishing (Association for Considering Psychological Issues of People with Hearing Loss, 2020). Support for people with hearing loss is not only psychological support (Katsuya, 2022), but also elimination of prejudice and discrimination, provision of necessary information, improvement of the environment, and social welfare support are also necessary, and these are issues we would like to consider in the future. I would like to continue my life's work of research that contributes to understanding disability and support for people with disabilities based on the results of psychology and social welfare studies.
(3) Research on information morality and information literacy
At the School of Social Informatics at Aoyama Gakuin University, my former home institution, I was in charge of "Communication Fundamentals," a course for first-year students to learn the basics of information literacy. The trial-and-error experience I had while teaching the class led me to conduct a survey and research on information morality among university students in collaboration with the professors who shared responsibility for this course at the time. Specifically, we were concerned about the issues of students' inadequate copying (the so-called "copy-and-paste" problem) (Azuma and Katsuya, 2016) and the use of social networking services (SNS) (Katsuya and Azuma, 2016). The results showed, among other things, that students' attitudes toward the copy-paste problem can be divided into two types: the self-conscious type, which emphasizes the learner's control, and the other-dependent type, which emphasizes external control such as school education and punishments (Katsuya, Azuma, and Inazumi, 2017).
I also conducted research on information literacy regarding medical and health information (health literacy) based on my own experience of having to visit several medical institutions before finding a doctor or medical institution that could properly treat my ear disease (Katsuya and Higashi, 2019). With the advancement of technology in search sites, even just entering the name of a disease as a keyword, sites with reliable sources of information hit the top of the search results. We would like to continue to think about how we can make use of this information in our own health management and in seeing the right medical institution for us.
(4) Research on “Tojisha-Kenkyu”
In my current position (Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo), I am conducting research on “Tojisha-Kenkyu”, or self-support research, in the Kumagaya Laboratory. I am involved in research related to comfortable air travel for the hearing impaired (Makino, Tsujita, Katsuya, & Kumagaya, 2022) based on the awareness of issues from the perspective of the parties involved, and recovery from the experiences of “Tojisha-Kenkyu” (Katsuya, Ayaya, Mukaiyachi, Hashimoto, Okuda, Suzuki, & Kumagaya, 2022). I am also in the process of summarizing my own experience of finding out about hearing loss due to a rare disease and cochlear implantation surgery within the framework of “Tojisha-Kenkyu”.