Culture and well-being: the cycle of action, evaluation, and decision

Two studies were conducted to examine how European and Asian Americans experience and remember their task performance, make a decision about a future task, and how that decision affects enjoyment of the task. In Study 1, although Asians solved as many anagrams as European Americans, Asians remembered solving fewer than did European Americans at Time 2. European Americans' Time 2 choice of task was predicted from Time 1 performance, but Asians' Time 2 choice was not. In Study 2, European Americans chose the same task if they had previously done well and a different task if they had not. Their actual enjoyment of the Time 2 task, furthermore, was significantly higher than at Time 1. In contrast, there was no change in actual enjoyment of the task at Time 2 among Asians because their choice was not based on their performance at Time 1.     

Cultural influences on the relation between pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions: Asian dialectic philosophies or individualism-collectivism?

The present study examined the hypothesis that Asian cultures' dialectical way of thinking influences emotion reports. A dialectical way of thinking sees emotions of the opposite valence (e.g., happy, sad) as compatible with each other. In contrast, Western philosophy considers these emotions to be in conflict with each other. We examined correlations between frequency estimates of pleasant emotions (FPE) and frequency estimates of unpleasant emotions (FUE) in Asian, non-Asian collectivistic, and Western cultures. As predicted, FPE-FUE correlations were less negative in Asian cultures than in other cultures. We also observed a tendency for the culture effect to be moderated by gender. The strongest negative correlation was obtained for women in non-Asian cultures.