AUTHOR=Schouten Anna , Boiger Michael , Kirchner-Häusler Alexander , Uchida Yukiko , Mesquita Batja TITLE=Cultural Differences in Emotion Suppression in Belgian and Japanese Couples: A Social Functional Model JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=11 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01048 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01048 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=
Emotion suppression has been found to have negative psychological and social consequences in Western cultural contexts. Yet, in some other cultural contexts, emotion suppression is less likely to have negative consequences; relatedly, emotion suppression is also more common in those East-Asian cultural contexts. In a dyadic conflict study, we aim to (a) conceptually replicate cultural differences found in previous research with respect to the prevalence and consequences of emotion suppression, and (b) extend previous research by testing whether cultural differences are larger for some than for other types of negative emotions. We postulate that cultural differences in suppression are less pronounced for socially engaging emotions (e.g., guilt) than socially disengaging emotions (e.g., anger), because the former foster the relationship, whereas the latter emphasize individual goals. Belgian (