Emotional dialecticism versus optimism: Cultural styles of emotion regulation among Chinese, Japanese, and *Americans.

Abstract

The present study provides evidence of both cultural similarities and differences in the representation of positive and negative emotions, and in how good positive emotions feel. Judgments of emotions made by American, Chinese, and Japanese college students were elicited using standardized events in a repeated-measures design. The relationship between positive and negative emotions was examined in positive, negative, and ambiguous (or mixed) events selected from a longer diary about a college student. We also studied participants' association of positive emotions with pleasantness (e.g., feeling good) independent from their association of negative emotions and unpleasantness (e.g., feeling bad). Results of the study challenged two assumptions: (1) positive emotions are the opposite of negative emotions; and (2) positive emotions feel just as good (or negative emotions feel just as bad) to someone in a Western context, as they do to someone in an Asian context. Across events, all three sampled cultural groups represented positive and negative emotions as opposites of each other, although this association was stronger among Americans. However in response to positive events, only Americans demonstrated an oppositional representation of positive and negative emotions; Japanese and Chinese reports of positive emotions were not related to their reports of negative emotions. Additionally, while all three sampled cultural groups associated positive emotions with feeling good, and negative emotions with feeling bad, positive emotions felt better for Americans than for Chinese. There were no cultural differences in how bad negative emotions felt. We discuss the roles of representing positive and negative emotions as opposites, and of maximizing the pleasantness of positive emotions among Americans in producing an emotional style of <italic>optimism</italic> or <italic>positivity </italic>. In contrast, we frame feeling positive and negative emotions simultaneously, and an emphasis on emotion moderation away from both positive and negative extremes, as a <italic>dialectical</italic> emotional style among Japanese and Chinese. Both styles of emotion regulation are informed by cultural models of self, emotion, and subjective well-being. <italic>Emotional optimism</italic> among Americans reflects the cultural values of independence from others, agency, and self-esteem; <italic>emotional dialecticism</italic> among Chinese and Japanese reflects the cultural values of social roles, interdependency, and social harmony.