Self-Construals, Anger Regulation, and Life Satisfaction in the United States and Japan

Satoshi Akutsu,Atsushi Oshio,Ayano Yamaguchi,Min-Sun Kim

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00768

Abstract

Previous studies have reported evidence that indicates differences between Western and East Asian cultures in anger regulation and its psychological consequences. However, many of these studies have focused on a specific anger regulation strategy and its relation with a psychological consequence. Here, we developed an integrated model that can comprehensively examine three different anger regulation strategies (anger suppression, expression, and control), independent and interdependent self-construals as the psychological antecedent, and life satisfaction as the psychological consequence. We estimated the model using large samples of American and Japanese adults to examine the associations between the two self-construals, three anger regulation strategies, and life satisfaction. We compared the difference in the patterns of relationships among the key constructs between the American and Japanese samples. The results confirmed previously suggested cultural differences while also discovering new culturally different paths. The results generally suggest that individual-level self-construals matter more when anger is a culturally condoned emotion (vs. condemned). The implications and limitations of the integrated model are discussed.

Highlights

Research into emotion regulation has increased dramatically in the past couple of decades (Gross, 2014)
We estimated the model using large representative samples of American and Japanese adults to examine the associations between the two self-construals, three anger regulation approaches, and life satisfaction, and to compare the systematic patterns between the USA and Japan
Before examining the relationships between the key constructs, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the structural equation modeling (SEM) of all of the factors in order to examine the factorial commonalities between the two samples with equality constraints

Summary

Introduction

Research into emotion regulation has increased dramatically in the past couple of decades (Gross, 2014). Initial research focused more on individual differences in the use of different emotion regulation strategies and showed that effective regulation of key emotions, such as anger and pride, in everyday life mattered to one’s life satisfaction (Gross, 2007). The focus has been extended to cultural differences in the use of emotion regulation strategies as well as to how their relationships with the key antecedents and consequences systematically differ across cultures (Mauss and Butler, 2010; Mesquita et al, 2014). This paper closes a significant gap in the literature by proposing an integrated model that can systematically examine three different approaches of anger regulation (i.e., anger suppression, Anger Regulation on Life Satisfaction anger expression, and anger control), independent and interdependent self-construals as the psychological antecedent, and life satisfaction as the psychological consequence. We estimated the model using large representative samples of American and Japanese adults to examine the associations between the two self-construals, three anger regulation approaches, and life satisfaction, and to compare the systematic patterns between the USA and Japan

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion