UC Berkeley

How and why do Westerners and East Asians differ in their use of emotion regulation processes? In the present dissertation, I describe five studies that test whether differences in the self-models of Westerners and East Asians lead to culture-specific patterns of emotion regulation. In Study 1, I conduct comparisons between and within cultures to test whether differential exposure to Western and East Asian culture is associated with divergent use of two emotion regulation processes--expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal. In Study 2, I use an experimental design to prime American versus East Asian cultural identity in bi-cultural East Asian Americans, testing whether there is a causal link between cultural self-models and emotion regulation. In Studies 3 and 4, I present evidence that these cultural differences in emotion regulation are not due to methodological artifacts associated with global self-reports. In particular, I show that similar culture effects emerge when emotion regulation in a specific self-disclosure context is rated by independent judges (Study 3), and when emotion regulation is rated by peers from an individual's real-life social network (Study 4). In Study 5, I test whether Western and East Asian cultural differences in emotion regulation can be explained by two specific cultural mechanisms, namely the interdependent and independent cultural models of self. Findings are consistent across all five studies and show that Westerners use less suppression (but not less reappraisal) than individuals of East Asian cultural origin. In terms of mechanism, these differences seem to be due to the strong emphasis on independence and authentic self-expression in Western cultures, rather than to the strong emphasis on interdependence and interpersonal harmony in East Asian cultures.