Cultural affordances and emotional experience: Socially engaging and disengaging emotions in Japan and the United States.

TLDR

The study hypothesizes that Japanese culture promotes socially engaging emotions while North American culture promotes socially disengaging emotions. Two cross‑cultural studies repeatedly measured engaging and disengaging emotions across various social situations to test this hypothesis. Japanese participants reported stronger engaging emotions and linked well‑being to these emotions, whereas Americans reported stronger disengaging emotions and linked well‑being to those, supporting systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time.

Abstract

The authors hypothesized that whereas Japanese culture encourages socially engaging emotions (e.g., friendly feelings and guilt), North American culture fosters socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride and anger). In two cross-cultural studies, the authors measured engaging and disengaging emotions repeatedly over different social situations and found support for this hypothesis. As predicted, Japanese showed a pervasive tendency to reportedly experience engaging emotions more strongly than they experienced disengaging emotions, but Americans showed a reversed tendency. Moreover, as also predicted, Japanese subjective well-being (i.e., the experience of general positive feelings) was more closely associated with the experience of engaging positive emotions than with that of disengaging emotions. Americans tended to show the reversed pattern. The established cultural differences in the patterns of emotion suggest the consistent and systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time.