Emotion Regulation and Culture: The Case of Substance Use

Abstract

People often engage in substance use with the objective of regulating their emotions – either heightening positive feelings, or dampening negative ones. Due to this behavior’s negative impact on health, including the possibility of developing a Substance Use Disorder (SUD), substance use is largely considered a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy (Sher & Grekin, 2007). However, recent work on emotion regulation suggests that the adaptiveness of a given strategy is actually not universal, but highly dependent on specific characteristics of the individual and situation (Aldao, Sheppes, & Gross, 2015). These individual and situational factors have not yet been fully considered in the case of substance use. One such factor that is of particular note in the case of substance use is culture, which influences many aspects of the behavior, including the availability of various substances and common contexts for their use. In Chapter 1, we give an overview of existing work on the role of culture within theories of substance use as a emotion regulation strategy. In Chapter 2, we examine data from an epidemiological survey on psychiatric conditions, and find that there may be differences in the relationship between social anxiety levels and alcohol use between Asian Americans and non-Hispanic White Americans. We discuss how this may relate to cultural differences in the association between drinking and socializing. In Chapter 3, we analyze risk factors for substance use in a sample of unemployed individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder, and find that race and ethnicity is one factor associated with riskier substance use, but that this varies considerably depending on the substance in question. In Chapter 4, we present results from an interview study of international students living in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed that participants had a generally negative view of solitary substance use, but expressed a desire to engage in social substance use for emotion regulation purposes. In Chapter 5, we explore the overall implications of this work on our understanding of substance use as an emotion regulation strategy across cultures.