Wanting to maximize the positive and minimize the negative: Implications for mixed affective experience in American and Chinese contexts.

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that European Americans have fewer mixed affective experiences (i.e., are less likely to experience the bad with the good) compared to Chinese. In this paper, we argue that these cultural differences are due to “ideal affect,” or how people ideally want to feel. Specifically, we predict that people from individualistic cultures want to maximize positive and minimize negative affect more than people from collectivistic cultures, and as a result, they are less likely to actually experience mixed emotions (reflected by a more negative within-person correlation between actual positive and negative affect). We find support for this prediction in two experience sampling studies conducted in the U.S. and China (Studies 1 and 2). In addition, we demonstrate that ideal affect is a distinct construct from dialectical view of the self, which has also been related to mixed affective experience (Study 3). Finally, in Study 4, we demonstrate that experimentally manipulating the desire to maximize the positive and minimize the negative alters participants' actual experience of mixed emotions during a pleasant (but not unpleasant or combined pleasant and unpleasant) television clip in the U.S. and Hong Kong. Together, these findings suggest that across cultures, how people want to feel shapes how they actually feel, particularly people's mixed affective experience.

Ideal affect in daily life: implications for affective experience, health, and social behavior

“…Although across cultures, people wanted to feel more positive than negative, European Americans and Chinese Americans indeed wanted to feel positive affect (relative to negative affect) more than did Hong Kong and Beijing Chinese. These differences were also related to the relative value placed on independence vs. interdependence [26]. Maximizing positive and minimizing negative emotion facilitates differentiating oneself from others, which is a goal of independence; in contrast, balancing positive and negative facilitates attention and attunement to others, a goal of interdependence.…”

“…For instance, although there are differences in the degree to which cultures want to maximize positive and minimize negative affect, as described above, across cultures, the more people want to maximize the positive and minimize the negative, the less likely they are to actually experience positive and negative affect at the same time [26]. …”

“…Thus, ideal affect may influence momentary actual affective experience, as outlined in [26], by directing people’s conscious or unconscious choices of particular situations, people, products, and activities. However, there are other ways in which ideal affect may influence affective experience.…”

Feeling Happy and Sad at the Same Time? Subcultural Differences in Experiencing Mixed Emotions between Han Chinese and Mongolian Chinese

“…First and foremost, previous research demonstrated that cultural differences between East Asians and Americans in mixed emotions were more representative in pleasant emotional events (Hui et al, 2009; Leu et al, 2010; Sims et al, 2015). Also, cultural differences are considered to be more salient in pleasant than in unpleasant emotions (Leu et al, 2011).…”

The Roots of the Challenge: Undergraduate Chinese Students Adjusting to American College Life

“…Another challenge for Chinese students is that Chinese culture does not praise openness or self-expression whereas American culture does. These differences between Chinese and American cultures create a lot of frustration due to miscommunication and make it difficult for Chinese students to feel confident when communicating with Americans (Sims, et al, 2015).…”