Emotions and Culture - Culture and Emotion Regulation

Culture and Emotion Regulation

Emotions play a critical role in interpersonal relationships and how people relate to each other. Emotional exchanges can have serious social consequences that can result in either maintaining and enhancing positive relationships, or becoming a source of antagonism and discord (Fredrickson, 1998; Gottman & Levenson, 1992). Even though people may generally “want to feel better than worse” (Larsen, 2000), how these emotions are regulated may differ across cultures. Research by Yuri Miyamoto suggests that cultural differences influence emotion regulation strategies. Research also indicates that different cultures socialize their children to regulate their emotions according to their own cultural norms. For example, ethnographic accounts suggest that American mothers think that it is important to focus on their children’s successes while Chinese mothers think it is more important to provide discipline for their children. To further support this theory, a laboratory experiment found that when children succeeded on a test, American mothers were more likely than Chinese mothers to provide positive feedback (e.g. “You’re so smart!”), in comparison to Chinese mothers who provided more neutral or task relevant feedback (e.g. “Did you understand the questions or did you just guess?”; Ng, Pomerantz, & Lam, 2007). This shows how American mothers are more likely to “up-regulate” positive emotions by focusing on their children’s success whereas Chinese mothers are more likely to “down-regulate” children’s positive emotions by not focusing on their success. Americans see emotions as internal personal reactions; emotions are about the self (Markus & Kityama, 1991). In America, emotional expression is encouraged by parents and peers while suppression is often disapproved. Keeping emotions inside is viewed as being insincere as well as posing a risk to one’s health and well being). In Japanese cultures however, emotions reflect relationships in addition to internal states. Some research even suggests that emotions that reflect the inner self cannot be separated from emotions that reflect the larger group. Therefore, unlike American culture, expression of emotions is often discouraged, and suppressing one’s individual emotions to better fit in with the emotions of the group is looked at as mature and appropriate.