Individual and ethnic differences in habitual usage of reappraisal and suppression in relationship with their associated psychological and physiological consequences 2

Table of Content CHAPTER 1 Introduction Two Specific Health Indicators: Subjective Well-being and Cardiovascular Culture Shapes the Relationship between Emotion Regulation Strategies and

Acknowledgement There are many people that I want to thank upon the completion of this dissertation

I owe my deepest gratitude to my husband and my family, for their bondless understanding and unconditional support in helping me to pursue my dream

I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Professor George Bishop, Ph D, Head of the Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore His wide knowledge, logical ways of thinking, constructive comments, and important support throughout this work have been of great value for me This thesis would not have been possible without his help

Next, my appreciation and solute goes to A/P Annett Schirmer who offered me chances to join her group meeting and allowed me to learn so much from there

This work is also indebted to many of the members in the department: A/P Mike Cheung for his advices in statistics; Dr Why Yong Peng for his technical advices in the lab; Stephen, Li Neng, Yong Hao, Kanika, and Ranjith for those invaluable discussions

Last but not least, endless gratitude is owed to my peers who were and are in the graduate room and the laboratory, for their companion and support All these technical and spiritual support I’ve received truly warmed my heart and I am enormously indebted to everyone who had encouraged me to be here

Table of Content

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Two Specific Health Indicators: Subjective Well-being and Cardiovascular

Culture Shapes the Relationship between Emotion Regulation Strategies and

CHAPTER II

Study 1 – Emotion Reappraisal and Suppression, and Their Relationship with

Subjective Well-being among Chinese and Indians

CHAPTER III

Study 2 – Individual and Ethnic Differences in Habitual Usage of Reappraisal and

Suppression in Relationship with Cardiovascular Profile

Effects of Emotion Regulation, Ethnicity, and Condition Manipulation

Positive Association of Reappraisal with Emotional and Cardiovascular

CHAPTER IV

Study 3a – Individual and Ethnic Differences in the Usage of Reappraisal and Its

Relationship with Subjective Well-being

Study 3b – Individual and Ethnic Difference in Emotion Expression and

Suppression in Different Situations

Cross-situational Variation of Emotion Expression among Ethnic

CHAPTER V

General Discussion

Summary The effects of two emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal and suppression, on subjective well-being (SWB) and cardiovascular reactivity (CVR), and the potential

moderating role of ethnicity on these relationships were investigated Results showed

reappraisal to be an adaptive emotion regulation strategy, linked positively to SWB, and to more adaptive affective and physiological reactivity in response to an anger provocation This positive relationship holds for both genders and among Chinese and Indians On the other hand, usage of suppression showed no correlation with SWB or cardiovascular reactivity during anger provocation in our Asian samples This non-significant relationship is consistent with the claim of “automaticity hypothesis”, such that Asians use suppression often and become good at it, and therefore suppression usage is associated with ameliorated

consequences In addition, Chinese and Indians showed differences in their reappraisal and expression of emotions, which reflects socio-cultural influences on cognition and behavior

Three studies were conducted Study 1 is a survey study One hundred and six Chinese and Indians took part in this study A positive relationship between reappraisal usage and SWB emerged, but the relationship between suppression usage and SWB was not

significant in our sample Chinese and Indians also reported different emotion expression patterns in front of different audiences

Study 2 is a laboratory-based study Forty Chinese females and forty-one Indian females were involved in this experiment Higher reappraisal scores are associated with healthier CVR profile and higher positive emotion ratings during a stress-eliciting task In contrast, suppression usage had no significant association with CVR or self-reported affective experience during the experiment

Study 3 is another survey study Two hundreds and thirty-two Chinese, Indians, and Caucasian completed the questionnaires The positive relationship between reappraisal usage and SWB was replicated In addition, using reappraisal to sustain negative affect and dampen positive affect was proved to be independent predictors on SWB Emotion expression levels

in different situations were also studied Caucasians reported overall higher expression and lower suppression than Chinese and Indians in various situations Indians reported higher direct expression of dissatisfaction and appreciation than did Chinese, especially to people who are not emotionally close

Overall, the three studies investigated individual and group differences of reappraisal and suppression usage, as well as their relationship with affective and

physiological consequences These results support the usefulness of the process model of emotion regulation in studying different regulatory strategies, but emphasize the need to adopt a socio-cultural perspective

List of Tables

Different Audiences

28 Table 4 Means and (SD) of Emotion Expression in front of Different

Audiences

28 Table 5 Effect of Close vs Not-close Relationship on Emotion

Expression By Ethnicity

29

Table 8 Means and (SD) of Self-reported Reappraisal and

Suppression Usage

55 Table 9 Effects of ERQ.R, Ethnicity, and Condition on Self-rated

Emotional Experiences

57 Table 10 Means and (SD) of Self-rated Irritation Composite Scores by

Ethnicity and Condition and Time

57 Table 11 Effects of Covariates, Baseline, Reappraisal, Ethnicity, and

Condition on CVR

59 Table 12 Means and (SD) of Self-rated Positive Composite Scores by

Ethnicity and Condition and Time

61

Table 16 Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting SWB From

Reappraisal Scores

78

EEAI

90

Table 23 Pearson Correlations Between ERQ.S Score and Well-Being

List of Figures