Ang Jen Ying Zhen, Tsai William
Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, United States.
Front Psychol. 2023 Aug 2;14:1204256. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1204256. eCollection 2023.
Expressive flexibility refers to the ability to assess situational demands and adjust one's emotion expressions via enhancement or suppression. It has been associated with lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms and greater social acceptance. These relationships, however, have not yet been examined across cultures-where prior research has found cultural differences in norms on emotion displays and their associations with mental health. This study examined expressive flexibility across three cultural groups and their associations with life satisfaction and depressive symptoms over time.
276 first-year college students (146 Asian American, 71 European Americans, and 62 Latinx Americans) completed two online surveys during the first (T1) and thirteenth week (T2) of the Fall 2020 academic semester.
Results revealed no significant cultural group differences in the ability to enhance or suppress emotions. However, we found a significant ethnicity x enhancement ability interaction in predicting T2 life satisfaction, controlling for T1 life satisfaction, age, gender, and emotion regulation frequency. Specifically, greater ability to enhance one's emotions was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction over time among Asian Americans, but not for European Americans and Latinx Americans.
Our findings illustrate the importance of not looking just at cultural group differences in the levels of expressive flexibility, but also at the associations between expressive flexibility and mental health.
表达灵活性是指评估情境需求并通过增强或抑制来调整自身情绪表达的能力。它与较低水平的抑郁和焦虑症状以及更高的社会接受度相关。然而，这些关系尚未在不同文化中进行研究——此前的研究发现，情绪表达规范及其与心理健康的关联存在文化差异。本研究考察了三个文化群体的表达灵活性及其与生活满意度和抑郁症状随时间的关联。
276名大学一年级学生（146名亚裔美国人、71名欧裔美国人、62名拉丁裔美国人）在2020年秋季学期的第一周（T1）和第十三周（T2）完成了两项在线调查。
结果显示，在增强或抑制情绪的能力方面，不同文化群体之间没有显著差异。然而，在控制了T1生活满意度、年龄、性别和情绪调节频率后，我们发现在预测T2生活满意度时，种族与增强能力之间存在显著的交互作用。具体而言，随着时间的推移，增强情绪的能力越强，亚裔美国人的生活满意度越高，但欧裔美国人和拉丁裔美国人并非如此。
我们的研究结果表明，不仅要关注表达灵活性水平上的文化群体差异，还要关注表达灵活性与心理健康之间的关联，这一点很重要。
