Ethnic Variation in Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) via cognitive reappraisal has been shown to be superior to the use of expressive suppression regarding several aspects of mental well-being. However, a cultural perspective suggests that the consequences of emotional suppression may be moderated by cultural values. In order to examine whether this also applies to clinical samples, we investigated healthy and depressed German women and healthy and depressed Turkish immigrants living in Germany. Groups were compared in terms of frequency of ER strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) and with which different aspects of mental well-being the same are associated. Healthy Turkish immigrants exhibited a greater ER balance (frequent use of suppression plus frequent use of reappraisal), which was associated with more positive outcomes of expressive suppression in Turkish than in German women. None of these differences were found in patient samples, both of which showed a greater use of emotional suppression than cognitive reappraisal. Results suggest that the cultural moderation of the link between emotional suppression and well-being is associated with a greater ER balance in healthy Turkish individuals. Depressed Turkish patients may not profit from suppression due to their more rigid use of it.

Age and Gender Differences in Relationships Among Emotion Regulation, Mood, and Mental Health

“…Therefore, based on the results of the Wald test and modification indices, we created a new model with a path from reappraisal to suppression strategies. We considered the path from reappraisal to suppression as valid because (a) a balance between appraisal and suppression is important for emotion regulation (Arens, Balkir, & Barnow, 2013), and (b) reappraisal is a strategy that people implement before their emotions are fully generated and suppression is a strategy to inhibit the expression of generated emotions (Gross & John, 2003).…”

“…Our findings regarding suppression were different from previous studies. The use of emotion-regulation strategies differs by ethnic group (Arens et al, 2013; Consedine, Magai, & Horton, 2005; Flynn, Hollenstein, & Mackey, 2010) and culture (Kwon et al, 2013; Turliuc & Bujor, 2013). The emotion-regulation strategies that people value differ between cultures that place importance on protecting and promoting the pursuit of individual happiness and those that place value on social order and human relationships (Matsumoto et al, 2008).…”

Organizational Dehumanization and Emotional Labor: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between Vietnam and the United Kingdom

“…Since both organizational dehumanization and surface acting involve a relationship of authority between the organization and its employee, power distance, which implies precisely power and authority values, seems to be the most relevant cultural value to consider in this research. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on emotional labor which has focused primarily on the cultural value of individualism-collectivism to explain differences in emotional labor experiences (e.g., Allen et al, 2014;Grandey & Gabriel, 2015;Luo et al, 2019;Mastracci & Adams, 2019;Nixon et al, 2020) at the expense of power distance, that is also highly relevant in contexts of emotional labor (e.g., Arens et al, 2013). Practically, we explored cross-cultural differences by relying on two samples of employees from Vietnam and the United Kingdom (UK), two countries that are assumed to differ in terms of power distance (Hofstede et al, 2010).…”

Cross-cultural evolutionary psychology

“…A growing body of research suggests that widespread variation in numerous psychological domains, including visual cognition [1,2], emotion regulation [3,4,5,6], the self-concept [7,8], psychological biases [9*,10], and social [11,12,13*,14,15,16] and attractiveness preferences [17,18*] exists cross-culturally (for reviews, [19,20,21]). These findings have challenged the generalizability of Western samples and have underscored the need for cross-cultural comparisons.…”