Emotion regulation strategies and psychological health across cultures.

Emotion regulation is important for psychological health and can be achieved by implementing various strategies. How one regulates emotions is critical for maximizing psychological health. Few studies, however, tested the psychological correlates of different emotion regulation strategies across multiple cultures.

Within- and between-group heterogeneity in cultural models of emotion among people of European, Asian, and Latino heritage in the United States.

Research on cultural variation in emotion values and beliefs has usually explained this variation in terms of individualism and collectivism, typically comparing European American against East Asian cultural contexts. This study examined emotion model variability across as well as within cultural contexts in a large sample of young adults of Latino heritage along with people of European and East Asian heritage. Using latent class analysis, we characterized and predicted endorsement of emotion models, distinguishing emotion ideals (the emotions one desires) from beliefs about injunctive norms for emotion (the emotions one believes are appropriate).

And they all lived unhappily ever after: Positive and negative emotions in American and Russian picture books.

The U.S. and Russian cultural contexts are thought to foster different models of emotion, with the former emphasizing positive emotions more and negative emotions less than the latter.

Corrigendum: Perceived Parental Support and Adolescents' Positive Self-Beliefs and Levels of Distress Across Four Countries.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.

Perceived Parental Support and Adolescents' Positive Self-Beliefs and Levels of Distress Across Four Countries.

Previous research has shown that parental support has beneficial effects on the psychological well-being of adolescents. Going beyond prior research, the present study made distinctions between information, emotional, and financial parental support and examined adolescents from United States ( = 1,002), China ( = 1,172), South Korea ( = 3,993), and Japan ( = 1,112). The frequency and impact of different types of perceived parental support on adolescents' positive self-belief and distress levels have been investigated.

Who emphasizes positivity? An exploration of emotion values in people of Latino, Asian, and European heritage living in the United States.

Emotion values vary within and between individualistic and collectivistic cultural contexts. The form of collectivism prevalent in Latin America emphasizes simpatía, a cultural model that stresses the relational benefits of positivity but also the costs of negativity. This model was predicted to engender a pattern of emotion values distinct from that of the more commonly studied collectivist group, people of Asian heritage (PAH), among whom an emphasis on moderating positive and negative emotions is typically observed, and from people of European heritage (PEH), among whom authenticity in emotions is typically valued.

Cultural Scripts of Traumatic Stress: Outline, Illustrations, and Research Opportunities.

As clinical-psychological scientists and practitioners increasingly work with diverse populations of traumatized people, it becomes increasingly important to attend to cultural models that influence the ways in which people understand and describe their responses to trauma. This paper focuses on potential uses of the concept of cultural script in this domain. Originally described by cognitive psychologists in the 1980s, scripts refer to specific behavioral and experiential sequences of elements such as thoughts, memories, attention patterns, bodily sensations, sleep abnormalities, emotions and affective expressions, motivation, coping attempts, and ritualized behaviors that are relevant to posttraumatic adjustment.

Feelings in the body: Cultural variations in the somatic concomitants of affective experience.

Affective science research has investigated how the sociocultural context shapes the bodily experience of emotion. Similarly, in the culture and mental health literature, there is a history of research on cultural variations in the presentation of somatic symptoms. A well-known example of the latter is the finding that Chinese depressed patients report more somatic symptoms compared to their "Western" counterparts.

Factors associated with Chinese American and White cancer survivors' physical and psychological functioning.

Objective: To examine whether health-related stressors and resources are associated with physical function, depression, and anxiety in Chinese American and White breast cancer survivors.

Method: During 2011-2013, this cross-sectional study enrolled Chinese American and White women from California cancer registries diagnosed with Stage 0-III breast cancer between 2006 and 2012. Survivors completed a telephone survey assessing health-related factors including comorbidity, treatment-related symptoms, medical communication, perceived threat, use of coping, and social support resources.

Ethnic variation in gratitude and well-being.

Gratitude is positively associated with health and well-being. Past studies of gratitude have primarily focused on the distinct cultural context of European Americans. The current studies aimed to extend gratitude research to Latino and East Asian Americans, 2 collectivistic contexts known to differently value positive emotions.

Lessons learned from multisite implementation and evaluation of Project SHARE, a teen health information literacy, empowerment, and leadership program.

Background: This case study describes the implementation and evaluation of a multisite teen health information outreach program. The objectives of the program were to increase health knowledge, health information literacy, interest in health careers, community engagement, and leadership skills of teens in disadvantaged communities.

Case Presentation: Teens at six sites across the country participated in a multi-week curriculum that focused on various aspects of health literacy, information literacy, and leadership.

Look At That! Video Chat and Joint Visual Attention Development Among Babies and Toddlers.

Although many relatives use video chat to keep in touch with toddlers, key features of adult-toddler interaction like joint visual attention (JVA) may be compromised in this context. In this study, 25 families with a child between 6 and 24 months were observed using video chat at home with geographically separated grandparents. We define two types of screen-mediated JVA (across- and within-screen) and report age-related increases in the babies' across-screen JVA initiations, and that family JVA usage was positively related to babies' overall attention during video calls.

The relationship between momentary emotions and well-being across European Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans.

Cultural differences in the emphasis on positive and negative emotions suggest that the impact of these emotions on well-being may differ across cultural contexts. The present study utilised a momentary sampling method to capture average momentary emotional experiences. We found that for participants from cultural contexts that foster positive emotions (European Americans and Hispanic Americans), average momentary positive emotions predicted well-being better than average momentary negative emotions.

The Effectiveness of Somatization in Communicating Distress in Korean and American Cultural Contexts.

Previous research has documented that Asians tend to somatize negative experiences to a greater degree than Westerners. It is posited that somatization may be a more functional communication strategy in Korean than American context. We examined the effects of somatization in communications of distress among participants from the US and Korea.

Culture shapes whether the pursuit of happiness predicts higher or lower well-being.

Pursuing happiness can paradoxically impair well-being. Here, the authors propose the potential downsides to pursuing happiness may be specific to individualistic cultures. In collectivistic (vs.

From culture to symptom: Testing a structural model of "Chinese somatization".

"Chinese somatization" has been frequently discussed over the past three decades of cultural psychiatry, and has more recently been demonstrated in cross-national comparisons. Empirical studies of potential explanations are lacking, however. Ryder and Chentsova-Dutton (2012) proposed that Chinese somatization can be understood as a cultural script for depression, noting that the literature is divided on whether this script primarily involves felt bodily experience or a stigma-avoiding communication strategy.

"I felt sad and did not enjoy life": Cultural context and the associations between anhedonia, depressed mood, and momentary emotions.

The meanings of "anhedonia" and "depressed mood," the cardinal emotional symptoms of major depression, may be shaped by cultural norms regarding pleasure and sadness. Thirty-two European Americans, 26 Hispanic Americans, 33 Asian Americans, and 20 Russian Americans provided reports of (a) depressive symptoms, (b) momentary emotions and pleasure, and (c) global subjective well-being. Momentary reports were collected over 10 days using handheld personal digital assistants.

Listen to your heart: the cultural shaping of interoceptive awareness and accuracy.

West African cultural contexts foster higher levels of attention to the bodily signals compared with the European American contexts. Interoception, or the processing of signals from the body, is a key component of emotional reactivity. Interoceptive awareness (i.

Russians in treatment: the evidence base supporting cultural adaptations.

Objective: Despite large waves of westward migration, little is known about how to adapt services to assist Russian-speaking immigrants. In an attempt to bridge the scientist-practitioner gap, the current review synthesizes diverse literatures regarding what is known about immigrants from the Former Soviet Union.

Method: Relevant empirical studies and reviews from cross-cultural and cultural psychology, sociology, psychiatric epidemiology, mental health, management, linguistics, history, and anthropology literature were synthesized into three broad topics: culture of origin issues, common psychosocial challenges, and clinical recommendations.

Depression in China: integrating developmental psychopathology and cultural-clinical psychology.

With a starting point in John Abela's groundbreaking developmental psychopathology research on adolescent depression in China, we aimed to review the state of the literature on Chinese depression across the lifespan. We began with Dr. Abela's published studies relevant to depression in China and our own research with adults before turning to the reference lists of these articles to find additional sources.

Depression in cultural context: "Chinese somatization," revisited.

We have presented a view of culture and mental health that builds on work in cultural psychiatry, anthropology, and cultural psychology, and applied it to research on culture and depression. In particular, we have returned to the well-known topic of Chinese somatization. A culture–mind–brain approach to these questions helps us think about them in a way that points toward new research.

Anxiety symptom presentations in Han Chinese and Euro-Canadian outpatients: is distress always somatized in China?

Background: Cultural variations in the relative emphasis on somatic versus psychological symptoms of distress are a common topic in cultural psychopathology. The most well-known example involves people of Chinese heritage, who are found to emphasize somatic symptoms in presenting depression as compared with people of Western European heritage. It remains unknown whether a similar cultural difference is found for anxiety disorders.