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Effects of Emotion Suppression on Life Satisfaction in Americans and Chinese

2017; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 49; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0022022117736525

1552-5422

Yeseul Nam, Young-Hoon Kim, Kevin Kim-Pong Tam,

Emotions and Moral Behavior

The present study aimed to uncover culturally different ways in which emotion suppression affects life satisfaction. To do so, we manipulated American and Hong Kong Chinese participants to perceive that they had suppressed their emotions to either a greater extent (high suppression) or a lesser extent (low suppression). In the control condition, there was no manipulation. Then, participants indicated how satisfied they were with their lives. We found that American participants reported lower life satisfaction in the high-suppression (vs. control) condition, but no difference was found between the low-suppression and the control condition, suggesting that high use of emotion suppression undermines Americans’ life satisfaction. In contrast, Hong Kong Chinese participants reported higher life satisfaction in the low-suppression (vs. control) condition, but no difference was found between the high-suppression and the control condition, suggesting that Hong Kong Chinese benefit from low use of emotion suppression. The implications of these findings are discussed.