Prefer feeling bad? Subcultural differences in emotional preferences between Han Chinese and Mongolian Chinese

Abstract

As a multi-ethnic country that is comprised of diverse cultural systems, there has been little research on the subcultural differences in emotional preferences in China. Also, little attention has been paid to examine how explicit and implicit attitudes towards emotions influence emotional preferences interactively. In this study, we manipulated explicit attitudes towards emotions among Han (N = 62) and Mongolian Chinese individuals (N = 70). We assessed participants' implicit attitudes towards emotions to explore their contributions to emotional preferences. (a) Han Chinese had lower preferences for pleasant emotions than Mongolian Chinese after inducing contra-hedonic attitudes towards emotions, and (b) after priming contra-hedonic attitudes towards emotions, the more Han Chinese participants evaluated pleasant emotions as negative implicitly, the less they preferred to engage in pleasant emotional activities. These findings contribute to the growing literature of subcultural differences and demonstrate that explicit and implicit attitudes towards emotions interactively influence individuals' emotional preferences between different subculture groups.

Gender and Age Effects on Public Attitudes to, and Knowledge of, Animal Welfare in China

“…However, in that study, no gender difference was found for China at that time (data collection was in 2007–2008). This may be due to differences in sampling, as the current study had a sampling skew towards the province of Inner Mongolia, which has implications because of the ethnic diversity within China and regional differences in the relationships between people and the natural environment, e.g., [ 48 , 49 ], or may be due to fluctuating gender roles and gender attitudes in China. In China, as in most other countries, gender gaps in societal roles and equality of opportunities are evident.…”

Influence Of Religiosity On Stress Resistance And Social Adaptation Of Teachers

“…Studies of factors affecting stress resistance and adaptability of an individual have been conducted for a long time. The influence of personality traits, gender, social status, belonging to a certain culture, social attitudes on the perception of stress and the quality of social adaptation (Deng et al, 2018;Hamamura & Mearns, 2019;Li et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2019). As for the influence of a person's religiosity on its ability to cope with stresses, there is conflicting information.…”

Subcultural Differences in Processing Social and Non-social Positive Emotions Between Han and Uygur Chinese: An ERP Study

“…Several cross-cultural studies have shown that Chinese have different beliefs, attitudes, and regulation tendencies toward different emotions as compared to their Western counterparts, especially for positive emotions (Miyamoto and Ma, 2011; Deng et al, 2019). This reflects the distinctive cultural values regarding emotions in Chinese culture (Deng et al, 2018, 2019; Ma et al, 2018). Therefore, this exploratory study aims to test whether culture shapes electro-cortical responses during processing of positive emotions by using an event-related potential (ERP) measure.…”

“…Most of the prior research on emotions in the context of Western culture makes the assumption that happiness is desirable and worth pursuing. However, Chinese are more likely to perceive negative aspects of happiness and prefer to feel less happy in their daily lives (Deng et al, 2018, 2019). Further, Chinese are less likely than European Americans to savor positive emotions (Miyamoto and Ma, 2011).…”

“…Based on the existing literature, Chinese culture displays distinctive cultural values on emotions in the processing of positive emotions. As an addition to previous research (Miyamoto and Ma, 2011; Deng et al, 2018, 2019), we focused on positive emotions and highlighted the importance of positive emotions in the context of Chinese culture. To date, virtually most studies about emotional processing made cross-cultural comparisons between East Asians and Westerners.…”