Cross-cultural comparison of university students’ emotional competence in Asia

Abstract

Emotional competence (EC) refers to individual differences in the identification, comprehension, expression, regulation, and use of one’s own emotions and others’ emotions, (Brasseur et al. in Plos One, 8(5), e62635, 2013) and is known to be culturally construed. Cross-cultural studies involving Asians typically sample one or two cultures as representatives of a collectivistic culture, but we opine to differ, in that these cultures have their distinct character, especially with regard to EC. We investigated the measurement invariance of Profile of Emotional Competence (PEC) with samples collected from four Asian countries, representing three distinct regions of the continent: Myanmar (N = 400), Japan (N = 400), China (N = 436), and Bangladesh (N = 400). We found that the PEC was a robust measure of both intrapersonal and interpersonal EC across these countries. Myanmar showed the highest global EC, followed by Bangladesh, China, and Japan, and significant effects of culture were found in all intrapersonal and interpersonal EC factors. Gender main effect was found in one intrapersonal EC (regulation of own emotions) and four interpersonal EC (identification of, listening to, regulation of, and utilization of others’ emotions), while gender-culture interaction effects were confirmed in two intrapersonal EC (comprehension and expression of own emotions). While cross-cultural studies typically bundle these cultures into one, that of Eastern, we found much variability within them, and they should be deemed independent of one another, especially in terms of EC. The findings enhance our understanding of EC across cultures, in particular with respect to the basis of which interpersonal behavior might differ across these four cultures.