Cultures of Moderation and Expression: Emotional Experience, Behavior, and Physiology in Chinese Americans and Mexican Americans.

Abstract

Ethnographic accounts suggest that emotions are moderated in Chinese cultures and expressed openly in Mexican cultures. The authors tested this notion by comparing subjective, behavioral, and physiological aspects of emotional responses to 3 (warned, unwarned, instructed to inhibit responding) aversive acoustic startle stimuli in 95 Chinese Americans and 64 Mexican Americans. Subjective reports were consistent with ethnographic accounts; Chinese Americans reported experiencing significantly less emotion than Mexican Americans across all 3 startle conditions. Evidence from a nonemotional task suggested that these differences were not artifacts of cultural differences in the use of rating scales. Few cultural differences were found in emotional behavior or physiology, suggesting that these aspects of emotion are less susceptible to cultural influence.

Walking the tightrope between work and non-work life: strategies employed by British and Chinese academics and their implications

“…British academics were more active and positive in terms of managing emotions than their Chinese counterparts, whose approach appeared to be suppression or self-control. This finding echoes ethnographic studies which suggest that greater emphasis is placed on emotional moderation and control in Chinese culture than in mainstream European American culture (Russell and Yik 1996;Soto, Levenson, and Ebling 2005;Zheng and Berry 1991). Our interviews clearly show that British academics tended to "think positively" and actively seek ways to change negative situations, whilst Chinese academics felt they were "compelled" and "have to" learn to adjust their own mood and cope with conflict between work and life.…”

Cardiovascular costs of emotion suppression cross ethnic lines

“…Third, we used instructed suppression, a "response-focused" emotion regulation strategy, versus the types of "antecedent-focused" strategies (e.g., situation selection, attentional deployment, reappraisal) where cultural variation may be even more likely to emerge (Levenson et al, 2007). Having said this, it is important to note that cross-cultural consistencies in the realm of emotional behavior and physiology, which first came to the fore in field studies of emotional facial expressions (Ekman & Friesen, 1971;Izard, 1971) and appeared again in field (Levenson, Ekman, Heider, & Friesen, 1992) and laboratory (Soto, Levenson, & Ebling, 2005) studies of emotional behavior and physiology, continue to be the rule rather than the exception.…”

Predominancia de la educación emocional occidental en contexto indígena: necesidad de una educación culturalmente pertinente

“…Junto a estas grandes diferencias, es posible observar otras más específicas que expresan lo deseable y no deseable sobre el comportamiento emocional (Soto, Levenson, & Ebling, 2005) y por lo tanto, sobre los mecanismos de educación y socialización de la emoción. Por ejemplo, Wong, Bond, y Rodriguez (2008) exploraron la relación entre valores y expresión emocional en 25 países, donde constataron que las personas de culturas que enfatizaban las relaciones jerárquicas expresaban no verbalmente menos vergüenza, culpa o miedo, mientras que las culturas más individualistas expresaban más frecuentemente alegría.…”