DEVELOPMENT OF A PERSIAN VERSION OF SUBMISSIVE BEHAVIOR SCALE

Abstract

A client’s cultural background is considered one of the important factors in psychotherapy that can lead to successful treatment outcomes. One of the major issues in the field of counseling psychology is the limited research on cultural factors related to psychopathology. Submissiveness is a behavior that is perceived differently across cultures. In western societies, submissive behavior is mainly defined as the unhealthy tendency to yield to the will or authority of others while in eastern cultures, submissiveness is valued and perceived positively. Submissive behavior is found to be correlated to depression in western societies. However, this relationship has not been studied in Iranian populations. The aims of this research study are to (a) convert the Submissive Behavior Scale (SBS) into Farsi and investigate its validity on the Iranian population and assess the equivalence of the Persian SBS in comparison to the English SBS, (b) to explore the relationship of the SBS, anxiety, and depression, and (c) to investigate whether SBS is a predictor of anxiety or depression in the Iranian population. The results of this study revealed a one-factor solution for the Persian SBS and two-factor solution for the English version of the SBS. However, confirmatory factor analysis revealed a poor model fit for the SBS within the Iranian and the U.S. population. Further, the SBS model was not equivalent between the Iranian and the US samples. Moreover, the relationship between SBS, depression, and anxiety in both populations was positive and significant. Last, submissiveness found to be a significant predictor of anxiety and depression for the Iranian and the US samples.