Background: Affect recall is key to psychological assessment and decision-making. However, self-concepts (self-beliefs) may bias retrospective affect reports such that they deviate from lived experiences. Does this experience-memory gap apply to solitude experiences? We hypothesized that individuals misremember how they feel overall and when in solitude, in line with self-concepts of introversion, self-determined/not-self-determined solitude motivations, and independent/interdependent self-construal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious research has used stationary eye-tracking in the lab to examine age differences in attentional deployment, showing that older adults display gaze patterns toward positive stimuli. This positive gaze preference sometimes improves older adults' mood compared to their younger counterparts. However, the lab environment may lead to different emotion regulation behavior among older adults compared to what they do in their everyday life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
April 2022
Objectives: Optimistic bias refers to the phenomenon that individuals believe bad things are less likely to happen to themselves than to others. However, whether optimistic bias could vary across age and culture is unknown. The present study aims to investigate (a) whether individuals exhibit optimistic bias in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and (b) whether age and culture would moderate such bias.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDo cultural differences in emotion play a role in employment settings? We predicted that cultural differences in ideal affect-the states that people value and ideally want to feel-are reflected in: (a) how individuals present themselves when applying for a job, and (b) what individuals look for when hiring someone for a job. In Studies 1-2 ( = 236, = 174), European Americans wanted to convey high arousal positive states (HAP; excitement) more and low arousal positive states (LAP; calm) less than did Hong Kong Chinese when applying for a job. European Americans also used more HAP words in their applications and showed more "high intensity" smiles in their video introductions than did Hong Kong Chinese.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDriven by socioemotional selectivity theory, this study examined whether age moderated the associations of volunteering motives with physical and psychological well-being in a sample of Hong Kong Chinese volunteers. Volunteering motives were measured by the volunteer functions inventory. Findings revealed that even after controlling for demographic characteristics and volunteering experience, age was related to higher social and value motives but lower career motives, and moderated the associations of social and protective motives with well-being.
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