Cultural influences on emotional display rules

Abstract

Emotional display rules are cultural norms about how to express emotions properly in various social contexts. Individualist cultures encourage independence and autonomy while collectivist cultures encourage interdependence and group harmony, the display rules can function to meet these cultural goals. Individuals in individualistic culture display more other-condemning emotions (defined in this thesis as anger, contempt and disgust) to claim their autonomy whereas individuals in collectivist culture display more self-conscious emotions (defined in this thesis as shame and guilt) to maintain harmonious relationships. The broad aims of this thesis were twofold: to draw a detailed picture of how emotional display rules differ according to the type of emotion expressed, the social context, and across cultures; and to explore values, self-construal, cultural intelligence, and acculturation as predictors of display rules. 387 participants from China, Japan and the United States completed Study 1; 423 participants from China, United Kingdom and United States took part in Study 2; and 161 Chinese international students studying in the UK participated in Study 3. All participants completed online surveys. The results of these studies demonstrated that East Asian (Chinese in Studies 1 and 2; Japanese in Study 1) endorsed displaying more self-conscious emotions (shame and guilt) than Westerners (Americans in Studies 1 and 2; British in Study 2). Moreover, structural equation modelling in Study 2 revealed that independent self-construal was positively linked with displaying other-condemning emotions (anger, contempt and disgust) and interdependent self-construal was positively linked with displaying self-conscious emotions. Additionally, serial mediation analyses in Study 3 illustrated that cultural intelligence was negatively indirectly linked to other-condemning emotions through low sociocultural adaptation and high acculturative stress; meanwhile, cultural intelligence was negatively indirectly linked to self-conscious emotions through stronger heritage cultural identification. Overall, this thesis provides empirical evidence to help us better understand how Schwartz’s values, self-construal, cultural intelligence, heritage cultural identification, sociocultural adaptation and acculturative stress are linked with displays of emotions. These results suggested that display rules are not only influenced by culture, social contexts and values; but are also influenced by one’s acculturating experiences. This thesis extends our current knowledge about display rules which could improve interpersonal and multicultural communication.