Is expressive suppression always associated with poorer psychological functioning? A cross-cultural comparison between European Americans and Hong Kong Chinese.

Soto, José A.; Perez, Christopher R.; Kim, Young Hoon; Lee, Elizabeth A.; Minnick, Mark R.

doi:10.1037/a0023340

Cited by 421 publications

(403 citation statements)

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“…This was in line with a number of recent studies, which indicated that Asian cultures more encourage the suppression of negative emotional expression in comparison with western cultures [1,1821]. This is because the expression of negative emotions may hurt someone else or are detrimental to social and relational harmony, which is valued by interdependent and collectivistic cultural norms in Asia countries [1,20,21]. For example, Friesen [49] observed that Japanese and European participants showed the same facial expressions when watching an emotional film alone, but Japanese showed less negative expressions in the presence of experimenter.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…For example, Friesen [49] observed that Japanese and European participants showed the same facial expressions when watching an emotional film alone, but Japanese showed less negative expressions in the presence of experimenter. In addition, many studies reported greater emotion suppression in eastern cultures, such as the report of greater habitual suppression in Asian Americans [37], the report that Asian values discourage assertiveness and encourage self-regulation when interacting with people of higher social status [50], and that suppressing emotion displays was considered as normative in collectivistic nations [21,51]. Consistent with all these evidences, the current study observed that suppression is as effective as reappraisal in dampening experienced negative emotion.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…Therefore, we predict that subjective experience of negative emotion is positively correlated with LPP amplitudes, and the self-reported levels of suppression should be positively related to central-frontal P3 amplitudes during expressive suppression. More importantly, as expressive suppression engages greater cognitive resources relative to reappraisal [10] and that suppressing the display of negative emotions is valued by Chinese cultural norms [18,21]; we predict that expressive suppression decreases negative emotion more quickly than reappraisal in Chinese individuals. Specifically, because LPP amplitude is a valid index of emotion arousal levels, we predict that the LPP amplitude reduction might happen at an earlier time point during suppression compared to reappraisal in Chinese subjects.…”

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Suppression dampens unpleasant emotion faster than reappraisal: Neural dynamics in a Chinese sample

Yuan

Long

Ding

et al. 2014

Sci. China Life Sci.

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The timing dynamics of regulating negative emotion with expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal were investigated in a Chinese sample. Event-Related Potentials were recorded while subjects were required to view, suppress emotion expression to, or reappraise emotional pictures. The results showed a similar reduction in self-reported negative emotion during both strategies. Additionally, expressive suppression elicited larger amplitudes than reappraisal in central-frontal P3 component (340-480 ms). More importantly, the Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitudes were decreased in each 200 ms of the 800-1600 ms time intervals during suppression vs. viewing conditions. In contrast, LPP amplitudes were similar for reappraisal and viewing conditions in all the time windows, except for the decreased amplitudes during reappraisal in the 1400-1600 ms. The LPP (but not P3) amplitudes were positively related to negative mood ratings, whereas the amplitudes of P3, rather than LPP, predict self-reported expressive suppression. These results suggest that expressive suppression decreases emotion responding more rapidly than reappraisal, at the cost of greater cognitive resource involvements in Chinese individuals. Event-related potentials, expressive suppression, unpleasant emotion, cognitive reappraisal Citation:Yuan JJ, Long QS, Ding NX, Lou YX, Liu YY, Yang JM. Event-related potentials, expressive suppression, unpleasant emotion, cognitive reappraisal. Sci China Life Sci, 2015, 58: 480 -491, doi: 10.1007 The ability to regulate unpleasant emotion is important for human life in the changing environments [13]. According to the time points in which a strategy has its primary impact in the emotion-generative process, Gross and coworkers distinguished between antecedent-focused and responsefocused strategies [4,5]. The former refers to strategies such as cognitive reappraisal, which requires interpreting emotion stimuli in a detached, emotion-irrelevant manner to modify emotion responses before they are fully blown. Conversely, the latter involves strategies that modulate emotional responses through modifying emotion-expressive behaviors, at the late stage of emotion activity. A typical example of response-focused strategy is expressive suppression [5,6]. Many studies revealed that cognitive reappraisal is effective in decreasing self-reported unpleasant emotion states, emotion-expressive behaviors and in reducing neural activity in the limbic brain system including amygdala and nucleus accumbens [4,79]. In contrast, it was reported that expressive inhibition was ineffective in decreasing the subjective experience of negative emotions such as anxiety [2,4,1012], while significantly increased peripheral physiological responding and limbic system activation [4,6,13]. In the early studies by Gross and colleagues, subjects who were presented with negative stimuli (e.g. films, pictures) received reappraisal, suppression or attending instructions. The results showed that reappraisal resulted in less negative experience, less...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

mentioning

confidence: 86%

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Suppression dampens unpleasant emotion faster than reappraisal: Neural dynamics in a Chinese sample

Yuan

Long

Ding

et al. 2014

Sci. China Life Sci.

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“…A comparative study was conducted by, 39 on European American and Chinese students. Results indicated that in European Americans emotion suppression to be associated with adjustment difficulties like poor satisfaction with life and increased level of depression.…”

Section: Psychological Consequences Of Suppressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross Cultural Variation in Emotion Regulation: A Systematic Review

Ramzan

Amjad²

2017

Annals KEMU

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A systematic review of literature on emotion regulation is carried out with the aim to identify, analyze and compare the commonly used emotion regulatory strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) in individualistic and collectivistic cultures including Pakistan and to study outcomes of different emotion regulation strategies in culture specific context. A systematic search has been conducted for required articles which have been published between 1990 and 2015. Only those studies have been included in the review which reported either cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression in their findings. Review indicates that individualistic cultures prefer emotional expression to regulate emotions while collectivistic cultures, such as in Pakistan, focus more on expressive suppression. Emotional suppression can cause mental disease, physiological illness, and poor social and psychological adjustment. To sum up, culture predicts whether individuals are motivated to express or suppress their emotions. Collectivist culture encourages greatest control on emotion expression

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“…Despite vast research comparing European Americans with other cultural groups (e.g., Butler et al, 2007;Matsumoto et al, 2008;Soto, Perez, Kim, Lee, & Minnick, 2011;Wei et al, 2013), there is paucity in research comparing value-based cultural differences in emotion suppression in Singapore. The present study aims to address this gap in information.…”

Section: H4mentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity from within: The Impact of Cultural Variables on Emotion Expressivity in Singapore

Hurley¹,

Teo²,

Kwok³

et al. 2016

IJPS

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Culture is intrinsically linked with emotion expression, as culture provides rules regarding how to manage emotions when they occur. Thus far, existing literature has extensively compared norms for emotional expression and suppression, revealing significant differences among culturally distinct but also geographically distant groups (e.g., "collectivistic" Chinese versus "individualistic" U.S. Americans). The present study examines the impact of cultural diversity within Singapore, a heterogeneous Asian nation of 5.4 million residents. Using an expression suppression paradigm, eighty-three participants viewed emotion eliciting video clips and their expressions were analyzed according to the Emotion Facial Action Coding System (EmFACS, Ekman, Irwin, & Rosenberg, 1994) for signs of happiness and disgust. Participants tasked to manage their expression were successful; however cultural indicators such as ethnicity, collectivism, and concern for face affected expressivity under both suppression and natural expression conditions. These results emphasize the importance of exploring culture within national boundaries, as multiple cultural factors (e.g., ethnic groupings, values, and face) influenced expression.

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Is expressive suppression always associated with poorer psychological functioning? A cross-cultural comparison between European Americans and Hong Kong Chinese.

Cited by 421 publications

References 31 publications

Suppression dampens unpleasant emotion faster than reappraisal: Neural dynamics in a Chinese sample

Suppression dampens unpleasant emotion faster than reappraisal: Neural dynamics in a Chinese sample

Cross Cultural Variation in Emotion Regulation: A Systematic Review

Diversity from within: The Impact of Cultural Variables on Emotion Expressivity in Singapore

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