Positive emotion by the consistency between the cultural context and the self-construal: studies using within culture variation

Abstract

Based on the theory of cultural task analysis, and viewing self-construal as an instrumental psychological function to adapt to one's cultural context, two studies tested the hypothesis that those individuals having higher consistency between the cultural context and the self would show greater positive emotion. In study 1, I measured cultural self-construal and positive emotion using 198 American students, and showed that those with higher independent self have higher score on positive emotional experience. Further, this was especially the case for European American students. In study 2, I measured Human Relations Questionnaire that divided interdependent self into subdomains of “others focus” and “helping others” using 226 Japanese students, to show their correlations with positive emotional experience. Additionally, “others focus” was found to correlate especially with relationally engaged negative emotions, and the subdomain of “self-focus” was found to correlate with high arousal positive emotion. Cultural nature in emotion was discussed in relation to within culture, ethnic and individual differences.View full abstract