Habitual Expressive Suppression of Positive, but not Negative, Emotions Consistently Predicts Lower Well-being across Two Culturally Distinct Regions

Chen-Wei Felix Yu; Claudia M Haase; Jen-Ho Chang

doi:10.1007/s42761-023-00221-1

Habitual Expressive Suppression of Positive, but not Negative, Emotions Consistently Predicts Lower Well-being across Two Culturally Distinct Regions

Affect Sci. 2023 Sep 21;4(4):684-701. doi: 10.1007/s42761-023-00221-1. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Authors

Chen-Wei Felix Yu^{1

2}, Claudia M Haase^{1

3}, Jen-Ho Chang^{2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Human Development and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA.
² Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
³ Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA.
⁴ Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.

PMID: 38156251
PMCID: PMC10751279 (available on 2024-12-01)
DOI: 10.1007/s42761-023-00221-1

Abstract

Habitual expressive suppression (i.e., a tendency to inhibit the outward display of one's emotions; hereafter suppression) is often conceptualized as a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. Yet, is this equally true for suppression of positive and of negative emotions? Across three studies and seven samples (total N > 1300 people) collected in two culturally distinct regions (i.e., Taiwan and the US), we examined the separability and distinct well-being effects of suppressing positive vs. negative emotions. Results consistently showed that (a) people suppressed their positive (vs. negative) emotions less, (b) the construct of suppression of positive (vs. negative) emotions was conceptually farther away from that of suppression of emotions in general, (c) suppression of positive and of negative emotions were only moderately correlated, and (d) only suppression of positive, but not negative, emotions, predicted lower well-being. An internal meta-analysis (k = 52 effect sizes) showed that these associations were robust to the inclusion of age, gender, and region as covariates. Future research may further probe the respective links between suppression of positive and of negative emotions and well-being across more cultural regions and across the life-span.

Keywords: Emotion Regulation Questionnaire; Emotion regulation; Emotion valence; Expressive suppression; Well-being.

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