Emotion Regulation and emotional experiences : An examination based on individual differences in terms of cultural self-construal

摘要

We examined the hypothesis that cognitive reappraisal is ineffective for people who have either a low sense of independence or a high sense of interdependence. We also examined whether culturalself-construal is related to the use of emotion regulation strategies and whether such use leads to emotional experiences in daily life. The respondents were 314 students, who completed scales aessing cultural self-construal (independence and interdependence)，use of cognitive reappraisal and suppression，and daily emotional experiences. The results indicate that the use of cognitive reappraisalis negatively related to daily experiences of negative emotions only for interindependent individuals. Furthermore，there is support for a model that includes both processes where cultural self-construal is directly associated with emotional experiences and processes that are mediated by the use of emotion regulation strategies. These findings suggest two possibilities; the first is that daily use of cognitive reappraisal is effective regardless of cultural self-construal and the second is that the relations between cultural self-construal and emotional experiences can be partly explained by the use of emotion regulation strategies.