What Constitutes a Good Life? Cultural Differences in the Role of Positive and Negative Affect in Subjective Well‐Being

ABSTRACT East Asians and Asian Americans report lower levels of subjective well-being than Europeans and European Americans. Three studies found support for the hypothesis that such differences may be due to the psychological meanings Eastern and Western cultures attach to positive and negative affect. Study 1 demonstrated that the desire to repeat a recent vacation was significantly predicted by recalled positive affect—but not recalled negative affect—for European Americans, whereas Asian Americans considered both positive and negative affect. Study 2 replicated this effect in judging satisfaction with a personal friendship. Study 3 linked changes in European Americans' life satisfaction to everyday positive events caused by the self (vs. others) and changes in Japanese life satisfaction to everyday negative events caused by others (vs. the self). Positive affect appears particularly meaningful for European Americans and negative affect for Asian Americans and Japanese when judging a satisfying vacation, friendship, or life.     

Attending holistically versus analytically: comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans.

Much research indicates that East Asians, more than Americans, explain events with reference to the context. The authors examined whether East Asians also attend to the context more than Americans do. In Study 1, Japanese and Americans watched animated vignettes of underwater scenes and reported the contents. In a subsequent recognition test, they were shown previously seen objects as well as new objects, either in their original setting or in novel settings, and then were asked to judge whether they had seen the objects. Study 2 replicated the recognition task using photographs of wildlife. The results showed that the Japanese (a) made more statements about contextual information and relationships than Americans did and (b) recognized previously seen objects more accurately when they saw them in their original settings rather than in the novel settings, whereas this manipulation had relatively little effect on Americans.     

Culture and judgment of causal relevance

The authors hypothesized that because the causal theories of East Asians were more holistic and complex than those of Americans, the amount of information considered before making a final attribution would be larger for East Asians than for Americans. This hypothesis was supported through 4 studies. When participants attempted to explain a deviant behavior (Study 1) or a prosocial behavior (Study 2), Korean participants took into consideration a greater amount of information than did either American or Asian American participants. Study 3 replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2 within each culture. Finally, Study 4 established a link between the present findings and past research on culture and attribution. Namely, Study 4 found that Koreans made more external attributions than Americans because Koreans considered more information than did Americans.     

Cultural influences on Facebook photographs

Prior research in social psychology indicates that East Asians from collectivistic and interdependent sociocultural systems are more sensitive to contextual information than Westerners, whereas Westerners with individualistic and independent representation have a tendency to process focal and discrete attributes of the environment. Here we have demonstrated that such systematic cultural variations can also be observed in cyberspace, focusing on self‐presentation of photographs on Facebook, the most popular worldwide online social network site. We examined cultural differences in face/frame ratios for Facebook profile photographs in two studies. For Study 1, 200 digital profile face photographs of active Facebook users were randomly selected from native and immigrant Taiwanese and Americans. For Study 2, 312 Facebook profiles of undergraduate students of six public universities in East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan) and the United States (California and Texas) were randomly selected. Overall, the two studies clearly showed that East Asian Facebook users are more likely to deemphasize their faces compared to Americans. Specifically, East Asians living in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan exhibited a predilection for context inclusiveness in their profile photographs, whereas Americans tended to prioritize their focal face at the expense of the background. Moreover, East Asian Facebook users had lower intensity of facial expression than Americans on their photographs. These results demonstrate marked cultural differences in context‐inclusive styles versus object‐focused styles between East Asian and American Facebook users. Our findings extend previous findings from the real world to cyberspace, and provide a novel approach to investigate cognition and behaviors across cultures by using Facebook as a data collection platform.     

Culture and context: East Asian American and European American differences in P3 event-related potentials and self-construal

Research has demonstrated differences in social and cognitive processes between East Asians and European Americans. Whereas East Asians have been characterized as being more sensitive to situational context and attending more to the perceptual field, European Americans have been characterized as being more focused on the object and being more field independent. The goal of the present experiment was to investigate differences in neural responses to target objects and stimulus context between East Asian Americans and European Americans using a three-stimulus novelty P3 event-related potential design. As hypothesized, European Americans displayed relatively greater target P3 amplitudes, indexing attention to target events, whereas East Asian Americans displayed relatively greater novelty P3 amplitudes, indexing attention to contextually deviant events. Furthermore, the authors found that interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between culture and the novelty P3. These findings identify a specific pattern of neural activity associated with established cultural differences in contextual sensitivity.     

Unpacking East–West Differences in the Extent of Self‐Enhancement from the Perspective of Face versus Dignity Culture

The question of whether or not the need for self‐enhancement is culturally universal has been a controversial issue in cultural psychology. Though there have been numerous studies arguing that East Asians also have the need for self‐enhancement, the controversy remained. We contend that the field is ready to see a cohesive theory that integrates and explains when and why East Asians do and do not manifest their need for self‐enhancement. In this paper, we provide the theoretical logics of and rationales behind face and dignity cultures as the new theoretical proxies that integrate and explain East Asians' self‐enhancing behaviors, supplementing the former approach that uses the individualism‐collectivism dichotomy. In particular, four representative properties of face culture — humility, public (versus private) concern, prevention regulatory focus, and harmony — are discussed to explain cross‐cultural differences in the extent and ways of manifestations of self‐enhancement motivation between European Americans and East Asians. Theoretical corroborations and empirical findings supporting this approach are also discussed.     

Cultural differences in affective forecasting: the role of focalism

The impact bias in affective forecasting-a tendency to overestimate the emotional consequences of future events-may not be a universal phenomenon. This prediction bias stems from a cognitive process known as focalism, whereby predictors focus attention narrowly on the upcoming target event. Three studies supported the hypothesis that East Asians, who tend to think more holistically than Westerners, would be less susceptible to focalism and, consequently, to the impact bias. In Studies 1 and 2, Euro-Canadians exhibited the impact bias for positive future events, whereas East Asians did not. A thought focus measure indicated that the cultural difference in prediction was mediated by the extent to which participants focused on the target event (i.e., focalism). In Study 3, a thought focus manipulation revealed that defocused Euro-Canadians and East Asians made equally moderate affective forecasts.     

Viewing time through the lens of the self: The fit effect of self‐construal and temporal distance on task perception

This paper describes how different self‐construals influence people's perception of temporal distance and in turn their task evaluation. We hypothesize that people with a more accessible interdependent (vs. independent) self‐construal perceive future events as temporally more proximal, and that people's reaction toward a task is intensified when the temporal distance to the task matches (vs. mismatches) their self‐construal. Across four studies, we showed that individuals with a more accessible interdependent self‐construal (Study 1) and East Asians (Study 2) perceived future events as more proximal than those with a more accessible independent self‐construal and European Americans. Further, when considering a task at a temporal distance that fits their self‐construal, individuals perceived a pleasant task as more motivating (Study 3) and an unpleasant task as less motivating (Study 4).

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It is our destiny to die: The effects of mortality salience and culture‐priming on fatalism and karma belief

The current study explores whether Asians use culture‐specific belief systems to defend against their death anxiety. The effects of mortality salience (MS) and cultural priming on Taiwanese beliefs in fatalism and karma were investigated. Study 1 showed that people believe in fatalism and karma more following MS compared with the control condition. Study 2 found that the effect of MS on fatalism belief was stronger when Taiwanese were exposed to an Eastern cultural context than to a Western cultural context. However, a matched sample of Western participants did not show increased fatalism belief after either a West‐ or East‐prime task. The present research provides evidence that Asians may use some culture‐specific beliefs, particularly fatalism belief, to cope with their death awareness.     

"Express yourself": culture and the effect of self-expression on choice

Whereas self-expression is valued in the United States, it is not privileged with such a cultural emphasis in East Asia. Four studies demonstrate the psychological implications of this cultural difference. Studies 1 and 2 found that European Americans value self-expression more than East Asians/East Asian Americans. Studies 3 and 4 examined the roles of expression in preference judgments. In Study 3, the expression of choice led European Americans but not East Asian Americans to be more invested in what they chose. Study 4 examined the connection between the value of expression and the effect of choice expression and showed that European Americans place greater emphasis on self-expression than East Asian Americans, and this difference explained the cultural difference in Study 3. This research highlights the importance of the cultural meanings of self-expression and the moderating role of cultural beliefs on the psychological effect of self-expression.     

Cultural variations in optimistic and pessimistic bias: do Easterners really expect the worst and Westerners really expect the best when predicting future life events?

The authors compared levels of optimistic and pessimistic bias in the prediction of positive and negative life events between European Americans and Japanese. Study 1 showed that European Americans compared with Japanese were more likely to predict positive events to occur to self than to others. The opposite pattern emerged in the prediction of negative events. Study 2 replicated these cultural differences. Furthermore, positive associations emerged between predictions and occurrence of life events 2 months later for both European Americans and Japanese. Across both studies, results of within-groups analyses indicated that both groups expected negative events to be more likely to occur to others than to self (optimistic bias). In addition, Japanese expected positive events to be more likely to occur to others than to self (pessimistic bias). However, European Americans failed to show the expected optimistic bias for positive events.     

At the intersection of culture and religion: a cultural analysis of religion's implications for secondary control and social affiliation

Religion helps people maintain a sense of control, particularly secondary control-acceptance of and adjustment to difficult situations--and contributes to strengthening social relationships in a religious community. However, little is known about how culture may influence these effects. The current research examined the interaction of culture and religion on secondary control and social affiliation, comparing people from individualistic cultures (e.g., European Americans), who tend to be more motivated toward personal agency, and people from collectivistic cultures (e.g., East Asians), who tend to be more motivated to maintain social relationships. In Study 1, an analysis of online church mission statements showed that U.S. websites contained more themes of secondary control than did Korean websites, whereas Korean websites contained more themes of social affiliation than did U.S. websites. Study 2 showed that experimental priming of religion led to acts of secondary control for European Americans but not Asian Americans. Using daily diary methodology, Study 3 showed that religious coping predicted more secondary control for European Americans but not Koreans, and religious coping predicted more social affiliation for Koreans and European Americans. These findings suggest the importance of understanding sociocultural moderators for the effects of religion.     

Cultural Variations in Motivation for Cognitive Consistency: Influences of Self‐Systems on Cognitive Dissonance

Are people always motivated to strive for cognitive consistency? Does culture influence a person’s motivation to maintain cognitive consistency between attitudes and actions or between preferences and choices? When and how do people in different cultures experience cognitive dissonance, engage in justification of their behavior, and use self‐affirmation? When and how are people with different models of agency motivated to maintain a preference‐choice consistency? In this paper, culturally variable self‐schemata and models of agency, independent self and agency dominant in North American culture and interdependent self and agency prevalent in Asian culture, are considered as the source of cultural variations in cognitive consistency. These culturally divergent self‐systems create variance in situations in which North Americans and Asians are motivated to maintain cognitive consistency. In this paper, related cross‐cultural research is reviewed. Some future research agenda are also discussed.     

Stand tall,but don't put your feet up: Universal and culturally-specific effects of expansive postures on power

Previous research suggests that there is a fundamental link between expansive body postures and feelings of power. The current research demonstrates that this link is not universal, but depends on people's cultural background (Western versus East Asian) and on the particular type of expansive posture enacted. Three types of expansive postures were examined in the present studies: the expansive-hands-spread-on-desk pose (Carney et al., 2010), the expansive-upright-sitting pose (Huang et al., 2011, Tiedens and Fragale, 2003), and the expansive-feet-on-desk pose (Carney et al., 2010). Of these postures, the expansive-feet-on-desk pose was perceived by both Americans and East Asians as the least consistent with East Asian cultural norms of modesty, humility, and restraint (Study 1). The expansive-hands-spread-on-desk and expansive-upright-sitting postures led to greater sense of power than a constricted posture for both Americans and East Asians (Studies 2a–2b). In contrast, the expansive-feet-on-desk pose led to greater power activation (Study 3) and action orientation (Study 4) for Americans, but not for East Asians. Indeed, East Asians in the expansive-feet-on-desk pose showed less power activation and action orientation than Americans in this pose. Together, these findings support a basic principle of embodiment — the effects of posture depend on: (a) the type of posture, and (b) the symbolic meaning of that posture.     

Inferring the emotions of friends versus strangers: the role of culture and self-construal

Three studies examined cross-cultural differences in empathic accuracy (the ability to correctly infer another's emotional experience) within the context of different relationships. East-West cultural differences in self-construal were hypothesized to differentiate levels of empathic accuracy across relationship types. In contrast to the independent self prevalent among members of Western cultures, members of Eastern cultures generally view the self as interdependent with those with whom they have a relationship. Easterners, relative to Westerners, are more concerned with the thoughts or feelings of close others and less concerned with the thoughts or feelings of those with whom they have no relational link (i.e., strangers). Across three studies, the authors found that East Asians, compared with European Americans, made more accurate inferences regarding the emotions of close others (i.e., friends), but less accurate inferences regarding the emotions of strangers. Furthermore, individual differences in interdependent self-construal among East Asians predicted the degree of empathic accuracy.     

Culture and change blindness

Research on perception and cognition suggests that whereas East Asians view the world holistically, attending to the entire field and relations among objects, Westerners view the world analytically, focusing on the attributes of salient objects. These propositions were examined in the change-blindness paradigm. Research in that paradigm finds American participants to be more sensitive to changes in focal objects than to changes in the periphery or context. We anticipated that this would be less true for East Asians and that they would be more sensitive to context changes than would Americans. We presented participants with still photos and with animated vignettes having changes in focal object information and contextual information. Compared to Americans, East Asians were more sensitive to contextual changes than to focal object changes. These results suggest that there can be cultural variation in what may seem to be basic perceptual processes.     

Situational differences in dialectical emotions: Boundary conditions in a cultural comparison of North Americans and East Asians

Past research generally suggests that East Asians tolerate opposing feelings or dialectical emotions more than North Americans. We tested the idea that North Americans would have fewer opposing emotions than East Asians in positive, but not in negative or mixed situations. Forty-seven European American, 40 Chinese, and 121 Japanese students reported the emotions that a protagonist of standardised positive, negative, and mixed situations would feel. Emotions were coded into three valence categories: pleasant, unpleasant, and neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant. As predicted, cultural differences in opposing emotion associations were found in positive situations only. Moreover, East Asians reported more neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant feelings, especially in mixed situations, possibly reflecting a deferral of valence appraisal due to expected change.     

Self‐Disclosure and the Liking of Participants in Reality TV

Reality TV shows are characterized by the very intimate self‐disclosure of their participants early on in the shows. In everyday interactions, however, such intimate self‐disclosure is welcomed only when it evolves gradually. This discrepancy between reality shows and real life apparently contradicts previous research documenting the similarity between real relationships and relationships with media characters. The current research explores this apparent contradiction by examining whether the relationship between self‐disclosure and liking and the rules about the timing of self‐disclosure that apply in everyday interactions apply in reality TV. Study 1 shows that viewers prefer characters who make early intimate disclosures, and Study 2 shows that they prefer this disclosure to evolve gradually and become more intimate, as in real relationships.