Keywords

Consider for a moment that Jian Lee and Geoffrey Hutchins have recently become friends. Both are students in the 8th grade at a school in the USA. Jian Lee’s family recently emigrated from East Asia, while Geoffrey’s family has lived in the USA for several generations. One day, Geoffrey comes to school extremely angry. His mother grounded him for 2 weeks that morning after he had a fight with his younger brother. When he tells Jian Lee the story, Jian Lee expresses very little emotion in response. The lack of expression annoys Geoffrey. He wonders why Jian Lee does not seem to care about his anger over his mother’s punishment, and he begins to express his frustration at Jian Lee, raising his voice and becoming increasingly animated. Jian Lee appears very uncomfortable with Geoffrey’s emotional display and becomes even quieter. Eventually, the bell rings and the boys unhappily walk to their first class.

What conclusions can we draw from this scenario? Is Jian Lee genuinely uninterested in Geoffrey’s anger at being grounded? Might Geoffrey be an aggressive boy that takes his anger out on those around him? To answer these questions, we need to consider the cultural differences in emotions that drive each of their behavior.

East Asians tend to suppress showing their feelings, while European Americans express theirs (Matsumoto et al., 2008). In keeping with East Asian cultural norms, Jian Lee is more likely to mask his emotions than express them directly. On the other hand, European American cultural norms suggest that Geoffrey is more likely to express his emotions directly. The results of these divergent norms around emotion expression have very real implications for cross-cultural relationships . While Geoffrey may think Jian Lee is disengaged and doesn’t care about his feelings, Jian Lee may believe that Geoffrey’s emotional display is highly inappropriate and perhaps even embarrassing. Moreover, a European American teacher observing the boys’ interaction may infer that Jian’s response is inappropriate, perhaps coming to believe that he lacks emotional intelligence (EI). However, to understand each child’s perspective requires an appreciation of cultural differences in emotion processes . The ways these processes differ across cultures affect how we think about EI within each culture, including its meaning, evaluative standards, and consequences.

Emotional intelligence has gained widespread popularity over the past few decades. Whether applied to relationships, academics, or the workplace, EI is often promoted as a very important—if not the most important—skill to achieve success within a given domain. This is especially the case in schools and within the workplace. Numerous consulting and coaching firms now provide testing of and training on EI for top corporations, promising financial success, “turbocharged” careers, more effective leadership, more fulfilling lives, and better relationships to those who improve their EI skills (e.g., Bell, 2012; Bradberry, 2016; Doran-Smith, 2013; Fletcher, 2012; Segal & Smith, 2016). Despite its widespread popularity, however, we believe that both public and academic understanding of EI is incomplete. Currently, our understanding of EI does not reflect the fundamental role of culture for emotion appraisals, recognition, and regulation, nor does it reflect the consequences of these emotion processes for people’s well-being. As our societies become increasingly multicultural, the importance of considering and understanding cultural differences grows exponentially. In the present chapter, we systematically evaluate the role of culture for various EI-related processes and highlight ways in which we can begin to incorporate cultural sensitivity into EI applications and assessments.

Defining Emotional Intelligence

Theoretical models of EI can be divided into ability-based and trait-based perspectives . Ability models construe EI as a form of intelligence, focusing on crystallized emotion knowledge and emotion-related cognitive processes (Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, 2008; see also Chap. 2 by Fiori & Vesely-Maillefer, this volume). Trait models view EI as an aspect of personality, focusing on dispositional tendencies and self-concepts reflective of emotionally competent functioning (Petrides, 2010; see also Chap. 3 by Petrides, Sanchez-Ruiz, Siegling, Saklofske, & Mavroveli, this volume). In this chapter, we use the ability-based perspective to illustrate how cultural differences can substantially impact our understanding, assessment, and applications of EI.

The concept of ability EI is perhaps linked most strongly to the work of John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey. They initially defined EI as “the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action” (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, p. 189). Since then, they and others have offered several revised definitions of EI (e.g., Brackett, Rivers, Shiffman, Lerner, & Salovey, 2006; Joseph & Newman, 2010; Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004), all of which involve, to varying degrees, “the perception, understanding, and regulation of emotion” (Cherniss, 2010, p. 184).

Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) initial ability-based model of EI proposed a four-branch structure : emotion perception, emotion understanding, emotion facilitation, and emotion regulation. The authors also developed a performance-based assessment tool to measure these EI abilities, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT ; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, 2002; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenios, 2003). Evidence of the validity of this model, however, is mixed. In particular, emotion facilitation and emotion regulation seem to be conceptually redundant, as emotion facilitation involves inducing specific emotions in pursuit of goals (Salovey & Mayer, 1990), much like emotion regulation involves down- or upregulation of emotion (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004; Gross, 1998). Further, several researchers have shown that MSCEIT models without emotion facilitation fit data better than models including it (Gignac, 2005; Palmer, Gignac, Manocha, & Stough, 2005; Rossen, Kranzler, & Algina, 2008).

To address these limitations, Joseph and Newman (2010) proposed a cascading three-branch model of ability EI , collapsing emotion facilitation and emotion regulation into one branch. As with prior research, their results showed that this three-branch model fit the data better than Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) four-branch model. The three branches are (1) emotion perception, (2) emotion understanding, and (3) emotion regulation (Joseph & Newman, 2010). The model is described as cascading because each branch is sequentially related to the following branch. That is, emotion perception is required for emotion understanding, which is likewise needed for emotion regulation. Using this model as the working definition of ability EI, we move on to a brief review of prior work that discusses further limitations of EI.

Limitations of the Ability EI Construct

Researchers have criticized EI on account of its lack of incremental validity, suggesting it explains only an additional 1% - 7% of the variance in workplace outcomes, above and beyond cognitive ability and personality variables (O’Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, & Story, 2011; Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004). This suggests that more than 90% of the outcomes that EI measures predict is already accounted for by measures of cognitive ability and personality variables. One exception to this general finding is for jobs that require positive emotional displays (i.e., high emotional labor), such as customer service positions . For high emotional labor, Joseph and Newman (2010) found that ability EI measures did add incremental validity in predicting workplace success, after controlling for cognitive ability and personality . This was tempered, however, by the finding that for jobs not requiring specific emotional displays (i.e., low emotional labor), the validity of ability EI measures was weaker and, at times, negatively—instead of positively—related to workplace success (Joseph & Newman, 2010). Although not inconsistent with the EI theory , this picture is certainly more modest than some of the early claims about the all-importance of EI (e.g., Goleman, 1995).

Moreover, EI researchers have paid fairly little attention to the role of contextual factors when assessing EI (Ybarra, Kross, & Sanchez-Burks, 2014). For example, in their review of ability EI assessment, Mayer et al. (2008) concluded that higher EI scores are positively associated with better social, familial, intimate, and professional relationships, better psychological well-being, and higher academic achievement , but they did not acknowledge the largely Western samples from which they drew their results, nor did they address the overall lack of cross-cultural research on EI assessment. Moreover, as pointed out by Shao, Doucet, and Caruso (2015), the answer key for the MSCEIT is often standardized on Americans, rendering results of its cross-cultural applications questionable.

Altogether then, there appears to be a lot of uncertainty concerning the construct of ability EI. Critics disagree on its definition, how to measure it, and whether it provides meaningful incremental validity for predicting organizational outcomes (except high emotional labor positions). Further, the role of culture for EI has been widely neglected. To fill this void, in the present review, we highlight the cross-cultural differences (and similarities) in the emotion processes that make up each of the three branches of Joseph and Newman’s (2010) cascading model of ability EI.Footnote 1 Although there is little research on the cross-cultural applications of EI assessment, we believe that our approach can shed light on the mechanisms purported to drive EI and thereby make useful suggestions for applying and assessing EI in a culturally sensitive way.

Culture and EI Abilities

The past several decades in psychological research have provided the field of cultural differences with a wide array of dimensions and definitions. To name a few, the assessment of cultural differences has been studied along the dimensions of individualism vs. collectivism , independence vs. interdependence , long-term vs. short-term orientation , masculinity vs. femininity , and tightness vs. looseness (Gelfand et al., 2011; Hofstede, 1983; Hofstede & Bond, 1984; Schwartz, 1994; for a review, see Grossmann & Na, 2014). For the purposes of discussing cultural differences in EI, we focus on the more commonly studied dimensions of cultural differences, individualism vs. collectivism (in values; Hoftsede & Bond, 1984; Triandis, 1995), or what is also commonly referred to as independence vs. interdependence (in self-concepts, motivations, and emotions; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

Past research suggests that cultures differ in the extent that their members adopt independent vs. interdependent self-concepts (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Independent self-concepts focus on the individual self and are more common among people from Western countries such as Germany, the UK, the USA, or Canada. Self-fulfillment, personal achievement, and personal rights and liberties are highly valued in individualistic cultures, where people tend to have independent self-concepts. In contrast, interdependent self-concepts are socially focused and more common among people from many Asian countries, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Central and South America. Group goals, social responsibilities, relationships, and conformity are highly valued in collectivistic cultures, where people tend to have interdependent self-concepts.

It is important to note, however, that inter- and independent self-concepts can also exist within the same culture. As we will discuss later, social groups within a country can form distinct subcultures and be more or less independent based on their social economic standing (Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012). Likewise, in a multicultural society like Canada, many groups retain elements of their ethnic culture while also adopting characteristics of the mainstream Canadian culture. This is called biculturalism and can take the form of a person having both collectivist and individualist cultural identities (Hong, Ip, Chiu, Morris, & Menon, 2001; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez, 2000). Ultimately, cultural differences in independence and interdependence influence each branch of Joseph and Newman’s (2010) ability EI model, whether they do so across or within countries.

Emotion Perception and Culture

Emotion perception is the first branch of Joseph and Newman’s (2010) model and the foundation on which ability EI is constructed. It is comprised of “the ability to identify emotions in oneself and others, as well as in other stimuli, including voices, stories, music, and works of art” (Brackett et al., 2006, p. 781). In this sense, a person requires the ability to perceive emotion to identify the despair of Fantine in Hugo’s (1862/1992) Les Miserables, in the same way as she/he requires emotion perception to determine that someone who is crying is likely experiencing sadness. According to the model, a person cannot be said to be emotionally intelligent without the ability to perceive emotions—and to perceive them correctly. Given the fundamental role of emotion perception, it comes as little surprise that many researchers have extensively studied its underlying processes. We break down a few culturally sensitive components of emotion perception in the following sections.

Emotional Expression

One of the key processes in emotion perception is the recognition of emotional expression. The study of emotional expression dates back to Darwin and his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Darwin, Cummings, Duchenne, & John Murray, 1872). Nearly a century later, Ekman and Friesen (1969) advanced the argument that emotional expression is both universal and culturally variable, a claim that would drive a wealth of research on cultural differences and similarities in emotion perception . Almost 20 years later, Ekman, Friesen, and colleagues (1987) published results demonstrating substantial agreement across ten countries on the interpretations of emotions in facial expressions. While they also hinted at cultural variation in the perceived intensity of these emotions, they deemed their evidence inconclusive (Ekman, Friesen, et al., 1987). Recently, Shao et al. (2015) attempted to determine how universal (i.e., consistent across cultures) or culturally determined the three branches of Joseph and Newman’s (2010) ability EI model are. Across two studies with samples from America, India, China, Argentina, and Japan, the authors found that emotion perception is the most universal of the three branches (Shao et al., 2015).

Despite the evidence supporting the universality of emotion perception, there are also signs of cultural specificity in this process. Elfenbein and Ambady (2002) reviewed 182 studies on emotion recognition and found that the mean accuracy rate across these studies was only 58% (SD = 19.6%), leaving lots of room for cultural variability . The authors also found that accuracy varied across channels of emotional expression. That is, for nonverbal channels such as static facial expressions of emotion, cross-cultural accuracy was higher than for more complex, dynamic channels. The authors suggested that photographs of emotional expression may be “stylized and exaggerated to improve legibility, using conventions that may be partially culture-specific” (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002, p. 230). Ultimately, this and other work point out that emotional experiences and expression are complex and dynamic, rendering them harder to interpret. However, as the authors point out, studying emotions in a more complex and dynamic way will increase the ecological validity of the research , even if it reveals that emotion perception is less universal than originally thought.

Attention to Emotion Stimuli

Notably, emotion perception requires attending to certain emotion-related stimuli. Beyond differences in which channels are perceived most accurately, culture greatly impacts what emotion-related stimuli people pay attention to. For instance, Jack, Caldara, and Schyns (2012) found that people in the West pay more attention to the eyebrows and the mouth when deciphering facial expressions. Chinese participants , on the other hand, paid more attention to the eyes. Further, cultures vary in the attention they tend to pay to positive vs. negative stimuli and how quickly they recognize positive vs. negative words (Grossmann, Ellsworth, & Hong, 2012). In this work, Russians spent more time looking at negative stimuli, while Americans looked at positive and negative stimuli for the same amount of time. Further, people with Latvian and Russian cultural identities recognized negative and positive words relatively slower or faster, depending on which identity was temporarily activated. That is, when their Latvian identity (which is more independent) was made salient , participants were relatively faster to recognize positive words and slower to recognize negative words than when their Russian identity (which is more interdependent) was made salient.

Building on the notions of interdependent vs. independent selves in an East Asian vs. North American comparison, some scholars have argued that in an East Asian context, people do not see emotions as necessarily reflecting one’s inner self , but as intertwined with the feelings of the larger group instead (Mesquita & Markus, 2004). In contrast, research suggests that most Americans believe they can infer emotion from another person’s face alone (Carroll & Russell, 1996). Masuda et al. (2008) addressed this issue by tracking the eye gaze of American and Japanese participants while presenting them with images of children’s faces that were expressing various emotions. In the middle of the picture was a central figure whose facial expression was either congruent or incongruent with facial expressions of those in the background. The researchers found that Japanese participants’ gaze was drawn to both the focal figure and the background figures, more so than Americans. Moreover, Japanese participants were more influenced by the emotions of those in the background when asked to judge the emotions of the central figure, such that when the background figures were congruent with the central figure, Japanese participants rated the focal figure as higher in that specific emotion . For Americans, the emotions of the background figures did not impact their ratings of the central figure’s emotions.

Subcultural Differences

Cultural differences in emotion perception are not limited to differences between countries but can also involve different social groups within a country. One example of this is captured by research on social class differences. Although it may not be frequently acknowledged, social class encompasses much of a person’s daily life, permeating communities, neighborhoods, and schools. This perspective has impacted recent theorizing on the construct of social class, with many researchers approaching social class as a form of culture (e.g., Grossmann & Huynh, 2013; Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2011). In the process of doing so, social class has provided researchers with a much more accessible method of exploring the influence of cultural differences, including cultural aspects of emotion perception.

Some of this research indicates that socioeconomic background matters in how accurately people perceive others’ emotions (Kraus, Cote, & Keltner, 2010). People from a lower socioeconomic background (lower-SES) are more contextually focused in their behavioral and thought patterns, promoting an interdependent, other-oriented focus on emotion and behavior. On the other hand, people from a higher socioeconomic background (higher-SES) live in a culture that emphasizes individualism and self-focus regarding their feelings and behavior (Grossmann & Varnum, 2011; Kraus et al., 2011).

These differences in social orientation have implications for emotion perception as well. Kraus et al. (2010) administered the MSCEIT (Mayer et al., 2002) to a sample of university employees who either had or had not received a 4-year college degree. The test consisted of identifying the most prevalent emotion in photographs of human faces. The researchers hypothesized that participants without a 4-year degree (vs. those with a 4-year degree) would score higher in the accuracy of another person’s emotions because the lower-SES culture is similar to collectivistic cultures regarding their awareness of others and others’ actions. The researchers found support for what they predicted, namely, that those who did not receive a 4-year college degree were significantly better in accurately identifying the emotions expressed in the test’s photographs than those who had a 4-year degree.

The evidence for cultural differences in emotion perception across ethnic and social class groups strengthens the argument that cultural differences have important implications for the emotion perception component of EI. Culture has an impact on how people think about and experience the world; differences in our environments contribute to the development of different social groups and affect how people come to interpret the emotions of others. Importantly, research suggests that cultural differences in emotion perception emerge not only across cultures (e.g., Western vs. Eastern) but also within cultures (i.e., higher-SES vs. lower-SES).

Emotion Understanding and Culture

The second branch of ability EI consists of macro and micro levels of emotion understanding. At the macro level, this refers to a structure of knowledge that includes one’s beliefs about how emotions change over time, which emotions are appropriate in certain situations, and how emotions differ from one another (Joseph & Newman, 2010; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). At the micro level, this branch refers to a more implicit understanding of one’s own emotions. That is, how we experience, understand, and represent our emotions. At both levels of understanding, one must first be able to accurately perceive an emotion—hence emotion perception “cascades” into emotion understanding. Of importance to this second branch of ability EI are factors on which cultural differences begin to emerge more strongly, such as differences in relationship structures, belief systems, social orientation, mixed emotions, importance or value of certain emotions over others, and the awareness of emotion causes (de Leersnyder, Boiger, & Mesquita, 2013; Shao et al., 2015). We have already addressed how several of these factors influence emotion perception (and hence, emotion understanding); here we turn to those not discussed in the previous section.

Macro-level Emotion Understanding

Emotion Origins

One of the key considerations for emotion understanding involves lay beliefs about the origins of emotions. Researchers have proposed that because interdependent cultures (e.g., China, Japan) tend to view most behavior as relational or conjoined, emotional experiences in these cultures are more likely to be seen as arising from relational contexts (e.g., family members, friends, coworkers). In contrast, independent cultures that tend to see behavior as separate and individually determined (e.g., the USA, the UK) are more likely to view emotional experiences as driven by a single entity or person (Uchida, Townsend, Markus, & Bergsieker, 2009). These cultural differences in the perceived origin of emotions have implications for how people come to understand their emotional experiences.

To highlight this process, imagine one’s emotional reaction to winning a sporting event. Would one be more likely to interpret his or her emotions as coming from within oneself or as arising from the environment? If one comes from the USA, one is more likely to interpret emotions as primarily internal; if one comes from Japan, however, one is more likely to interpret one’s emotions as driven by a combination of internal and social contextual cues, including people who make up the social context (Uchida et al., 2009).

Emotions and Relationships

To better understand why emotion processes differ across cultures, it is important to recognize that emotions are closely connected to social relationships (Frijda & Mesquita, 1994; Keltner & Haidt, 1999). Cultural context plays a major role in shaping relationships. In turn, people’s emotion understanding tends to reflect the impact of the cultural context on their relationships (de Leersnyder et al., 2013). Among European Americans, individuality and autonomy tend to be valued relationship models (Kim & Markus, 1999; Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, & Weisz, 2000; Triandis, 1995). As a result, emotional experiences that threaten autonomy and emphasize interconnectedness are not as valued (Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, 2006) as among East Asians who tend to value interconnectedness in their relationship models (Kim & Markus, 1999; Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997), emphasizing the accommodation of each other’s limitations and strengths (Lebra, 1992; Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Kim & Markus, 1999; Oishi & Diener, 2003). Regarding valuing emotional experiences, these differences suggest that East Asians are more likely to value the emotional experience of guilt and shame, for example, because these emotions reflect social awareness and interconnectedness (Kitayama & Markus, 2000; Kitayama et al., 1997, 2006). European Americans, on the other hand, are less likely to value these emotional experiences because they do not align with being autonomous and independent. For both cultures, the emotional experience is the same (i.e., feelings of guilt and shame), but the influence of culturally valued relationship models determines how these emotional experiences are understood (i.e., desirable vs. undesirable).

Mixed Emotions

There is a consensus that East Asian cultures are more likely than Western cultures to report experiencing pleasant and unpleasant emotions at the same time (Bagozzi, Wong, & Yi, 1999; Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2002; Scollon, Oishi, Diener, & Biswas-Diener, 2004). Early studies pointed to key distinctions in cultural belief systems as an explanation for why emotional experiences differed across cultures. For example, Eastern cultures have historically been associated with teachings that emphasize the complementarity of opposites and the balance of contradiction (e.g., Confucianism, Taoism). However, recent research suggests that differences in belief systems cannot wholly account for these experiential differences in cultural understanding of emotions. This is particularly evident when considering that cultures that do not share the historical teachings of East Asia still show varying degrees of complexity. Rather, recent research suggests that differences in inter- and independent social orientations better explain cultural differences in emotional complexity (Grossmann, Huynh, & Ellsworth, 2015). The researchers argue that seeing emotions as an interaction of the situational context and those involved—as interdependent cultures tend to do—enables recognition that situations can evoke multiple types of emotion and allows for the recognition of multiple forms of emotion in and across situations.

Micro-level Emotion Understanding

Reporting Emotions and Emotional Experiences

These culturally divergent views of emotional experiences influence whether people report experiencing specific types of emotions. In one study, European Americans reported experiencing socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride, anger) more frequently and intensely in their past emotional experiences than Japanese (Kitayama et al., 2006). Socially engaging emotions (e.g., shame, guilt) showed the opposite pattern: Japanese reported greater intensity and frequency of these emotions in past emotional experiences than European Americans (Kitayama, et al., 2006). In another study, researchers compared televised studio interviews of Japanese and American winners from the 2004 summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece (Uchida et al., 2009; Studies1–2). They coded the degree to which the athletes mentioned emotions in their responses to questions from the interviewers. While athletes from both cultures mentioned emotions to a similar degree when asked about their emotional experience, Japanese athletes were significantly more likely than American athletes to mention emotions when interviewers asked them about others (e.g., family, coaches, teammates). Moreover, when researchers asked Japanese and American participants to describe the reactions of athletes who had just won the Olympic finals, American participants were more likely than Japanese participants to describe the athletes as expressing self-focused than self- and other-focused emotions. These studies suggest that emotional experience and emotion understanding can vary by culture; Americans’ understanding of emotion and emotional experiences is more likely to focus on the self , whereas Japanese are more likely to understand their emotions and emotional experiences in relation to others.

Ideal Affect

Although cultures differ on emotion processes, most people, regardless of culture, want to feel good (Tsai, 2007). What “feeling good” means, though, varies by culture. In their work on ideal vs. actual affect, Tsai, Knutson, and Fung (2006) found that European and Chinese Americans’ ideal affect consists of high-arousal positive emotions (e.g., enthusiastic, excited) to a greater degree than for Hong Kong Chinese. At the same time, both Chinese Americans and Hong Kong Chinese reported that their ideal affect consisted of low-arousal positive emotions (e.g., calm, relaxed) to a greater degree than it did for their European American counterparts. Despite the differences in ideal affect, however, discrepancies between people’s ideal and actual affect were related to depression, across all cultural groups. That is, the less European Americans’ actual emotional experience consisted of high-arousal positive emotions, and the less Hong Kong Chinese actually experienced the low-arousal positive emotions they valued most, the more both groups reported feeling depressed.

In line with cultural differences in ideal affect, cultures differ in where they draw their happiness from. Although Kwan, Bond, and Singelis (1997) found that both European Americans and Hong Kong Chinese derived life satisfaction from their self-esteem and the quality of their relationships, Hong Kong Chinese drew satisfaction from both sources to a similar degree, while European Americans looked more to their self-esteem for life satisfaction than their relationships.

Emotion Regulation and Culture

The third and final branch of Joseph and Newman’s (2010) ability EI model is emotion regulation , defined as “the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (Gross, 1998, p. 275). Of the three branches, emotion regulation is perhaps most closely aligned with the measures of success that EI is said to predict. Models of emotion regulation tie it to positive outcomes such as better health, greater workplace and academic success, and improved relationships (Brackett & Salovey, 2004; John & Gross, 2004). At the same time, some emotion regulation strategies have been shown to be detrimental to one’s mental health in the long run, even if beneficial in the immediate context (Gross, 1998).

Emotion Regulation Strategies

A meta-analysis of the relationship between emotion regulation and psychopathology by Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, and Schweizer (2010) examined six emotion regulation strategies (see Table 5.1 for definitions of each strategy). According to the authors’ research, three of these are generally believed to be adaptive for one’s mental health: reappraisal, problem-solving, and acceptance. The other three are viewed as risk factors for one’s mental health: suppression, avoidance, and rumination. As we aim to show, however, such conclusions do not necessarily reflect cross-cultural variation in ideal affect or the emotion regulation strategies most frequently employed to achieve such a state.

Table 5.1 Emotion regulation strategies and their definitions
Full size table

Preferred emotion regulation strategies vary by culture. Research suggests that Americans tend to engage in reappraisal of emotions more often than Japanese, while Japanese are more likely to use emotion suppression than Americans (Matsumoto, 2006). Likewise, there are cultural differences in the intended outcomes of emotion regulation efforts. Chinese students in a study by Wei, Su, Carrera, Lin, and Yi (2013) showed a significantly positive relation between emotion regulation and interpersonal harmony, while this relationship did not emerge for European Americans. In line with an interdependent relationship model, it appears that, for students from an interdependent culture (i.e., Chinese but not European American students), regulating one’s emotions served to increase interpersonal harmony. In contrast, emotion regulation for European Americans served to increase hedonia—that is, European Americans attempt to increase their positive emotions and moods while decreasing their negative ones (Miyamoto, Ma, & Petermann, 2014). In a study on the effect of emotion regulation over several days, Miyamoto et al. (2014) found that European Americans experienced a steeper decline in negative—and a somewhat steeper incline in positive—emotions the day after a negative event than did Asians.

Building on these differences in preferred emotion regulation strategies and their intended outcomes, research has shown that the relationships between certain strategies and mental health are not universal. Much of the research on emotion suppression suggests that it is linked to negative outcomes such as lower well-being and negative adjustment (e.g., Haga, Kraft, & Corby, 2009; Matsumoto et al., 2008). However, most of this research has been conducted on Western samples. Cross-cultural studies show that the relationship between suppression and mental health varies substantially by culture. For example, one study found that the use of emotion suppression for European American participants was associated with greater depression and lower life satisfaction, whereas emotion suppression among Hong Kong Chinese participants was not (Soto, Perez, Kim, Lee, & Minnick, 2011). Researchers argue that while suppression is associated with some negative consequences for an individual (e.g., less social closeness, reduced rapport; John & Gross, 2004), it can also have positive consequences on a social level, helping certain cultures maintain their cultural systems (Matsumoto et al., 2008).

In a study of emotion suppression and emotion reappraisal across 23 cultures, Matsumoto et al. (2008) found opposing relationships between suppression and reappraisal . Cultures defined by a strong sense of social order and hierarchy tended to have higher scores on emotion suppression overall and showed a positive relationship between suppression and reappraisal emotion regulation strategies, whereas cultures that emphasized egalitarianism and affective autonomy tended to have lower scores on suppression and showed a negative relationship between suppression and reappraisal.

Having demonstrated culturally variable relationships between reappraisal and suppression with psychological outcomes, we move on to review cross-cultural research on rumination. Grossmann and Kross (2010; Study 1) compared the effects of rumination on Russian and European American participants. They found that Russians reported engaging in more ruminative behavior than Americans, likely because Russians tend to focus on unpleasant emotions more than pleasant emotions (Grossmann et al., 2012). As a result, Russians may be more likely than Americans to adopt ruminative strategies.

Research on Americans suggests that rumination is associated with depression and anxiety and interferes with problem-solving abilities (Aldao et al., 2010; Hong, 2007). Does it mean that Russians are more subject to mental health and poor decision-making than Americans because they ruminate more? It appears that this is not the case. Researchers found that when Russians were asked to focus on their “deepest thoughts and feelings” surrounding a negative interpersonal experience, they felt less distress over the event than when Americans were asked to do the same (Grossmann & Kross, 2010; Study 2). Why? Because of their more interdependent orientation (relative to Americans), Russians tend to ruminate on their experiences in a qualitatively different fashion than Americans, which has fundamental consequences for their mental health. Rather than immersing themselves into their ruminative experience, replaying it again and again in their mind’s eye, Russians are more likely to report reflecting on the experience from a vantage point of a distanced observer. Such tendency to distance oneself during the ruminative experience in turn promotes adaptive working through past distress.

Overall, the research is clear that culture plays a prominent role in determining people’s preferred emotion regulation strategies, the efficacy of these strategies, and their impact on mental health. Broad generalizations of the benefits or detriments of certain strategies (e.g., Aldao et al., 2010) should be avoided when they do not take into consideration the cultural context they are studied in. In the same way, EI models that include emotion regulation should avoid sweeping generalizations of how certain strategies are related to greater performance or stronger relationships. Based on the cross-cultural differences in reappraisal, suppression, and rumination, it seems reasonable to infer for the other strategies where empirical evidence is lacking that the relations between emotion regulation strategies and performance or relationship outcomes are not the same across cultures.

Summary

Upon reviewing cultural differences across the three-branch cascading model of ability EI (Joseph & Newman, 2010), we observed substantial variability in the meaning, frequency, intensity, and function of various affective processes involved in emotion perception, understanding, and regulation. Compared to people from an interdependent culture, those from independent cultures are more likely to see emotions as arising from within themselves, orient their attention toward focal features of a situation when determining what emotions someone is experiencing, and will tend to focus on a person’s eyebrows and mouth when deciphering her facial expressions of emotion. Alternatively, people from interdependent cultures are more likely to see their emotions as socially constructed, orient to the context when deciding how someone is feeling, and will tend to focus on a person’s eyes when identifying her facial expressions of emotion. Further, the meaning and experience of emotional appraisals like valence and arousal vary substantially across cultures: independent cultures focus on maximizing positive and minimizing negative emotions, while interdependent cultures try to balance their positive and negative emotions. Cultures also vary in their emotion regulation. Interdependent cultures are more likely to engage in emotion suppression (Matsumoto, 2006), whereas independent cultures tend to favor hedonic emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal (Miyamoto et al., 2014). The research we have reviewed so far demonstrates the substantial value of considering the role of culture across the various components of EI. We believe that EI cannot be fully understood without a cultural context, a point worth emphasizing as we move on to discuss the implications culture has in how researchers and practitioners have utilized the construct of EI thus far.

The Implications of Culture in EI Assessment and Application

The utility of EI across a variety of occupations is a topic of much interest, critique, and scholarly speculation (see Zeidner, Matthews, & Roberts, 2004). The application of EI in workplaces and educational institutions has been a highly controversial topic. Whereas early writings claimed that EI accounted for a large degree of the success in top leaders in business (e.g., Cooper, 1997; Goleman, 1995), others argued that there was little evidence to support those claims or suggested that the application and assessment of EI in workplaces lacked consistency (Zeidner et al., 2004). More recent research evidence points to a positive but relatively modest contribution of ability EI to performance, relationships, and well-being (Joseph & Newman, 2010; Mayer et al., 2008; O’Boyle et al., 2011).

It appears that common measurement tools for assessing ability EI (e.g., MSCEIT; Mayer et al., 2002) are inadequate for assessing EI across cultures. Moreover, cross-cultural variance in measurement can lead to biased assessment. For instance, Joseph and Newman (2010) found that performance-based measures of EI are biased in favor of White over African-American respondents, similar to traditional measures of IQ (Cronshaw, Hamilton, Onyura, & Winston, 2006; Shuttleworth-Edwards et al., 2004; Verney, Granholn, Marshall, Malcarne, & Saccuzzo, 2005). Findings like these demonstrate that cultural considerations have not played a central role in the development of EI assessments and/or their applications, raising the question of how the knowledge about cultural differences in affective processes can guide the interpretation of EI results in educational settings and the workplace.

As a first step, it is important to identify how EI is characterized in organizational contexts . Consider the following emotional competencies that are considered critical for successful performance in the workplace: emotional self-awareness, regulation of emotions in the self, and social awareness of emotions and empathy (Huy, 1999; Goleman, 1998; Weisinger, 1998). Performance on these components will likely vary as a function of the cultural differences we discussed earlier. For example, because cultures differ on where they believe emotions are derived from (Uchida et al., 2009), they are likely to differ in their social awareness of emotions and empathy. Specifically, people from interdependent cultures will tend to understand emotions as situated within the social context. On the other hand, people from independent cultures will tend to understand emotions as situated within themselves. As a result, a person from an independent culture may experience anger when she fails to achieve a goal because she views her failure as a poor reflection on her. A person from an interdependent culture may be more likely to feel shame in the same situation because she views her failure as a poor reflection on the group.

Adopting this awareness within an educational setting, students may mirror similar reactions to failure as a function of their cultural background. That is, a student from an interdependent culture may feel more shame when he fails his final exam than a student from an independent culture, whereas the latter student may feel more anger. Further, how these students regulate their experiences of shame and anger will likely differ. The student from an interdependent culture is more likely to suppress his emotions, and if he does express them, to minimize his expression. In contrast, the student from an independent culture may attempt to reappraise his emotions once his anger subsides, but he is more likely to express his anger since it is a high-arousal emotion. As an educator with an independent cultural background, it may seem like the angry student is more upset by his failing grade than the quiet student, but this is not necessarily the case. Understanding the culturally driven responses to negative events is crucial to avoid mistakenly assuming the student from an interdependent culture is apathetic, not invested, or (in case of expressive suppression) may be at risk of harming him-/herself. As well, when addressing individual students, different strategies may be needed to respond to their unique emotional experiences.

Beyond social awareness of emotions, eliciting and channeling emotions when appropriate and restraining negative emotions are additional indicators of emotional competence and predictors of success in the workplace (Zeidner et al., 2004). Likewise, in educational settings, it is reasonable to assume that certain children may excel at eliciting and channeling appropriate emotions, whereas others may excel at suppressing negative emotions. Practically speaking, situations that require suppression or eliciting emotions may pose varying challenges for students. In a Western setting, it may seem intuitive to think that suppression of emotional expression is associated with negative outcomes like greater depression (Aldao et al., 2010). Further, if a student comes from an interdependent culture and tends not to express her emotions readily, she may be seen as cold and unfriendly. Others may even pressure her to emote more, but doing so fails to take into consideration the fact that according to her cultural background, she is regulating her emotions appropriately and effectively.

In educational settings, the development of emotional competence is a social process that may vary markedly across different cultural contexts. Recognizing this is crucial for the implementation and development of programs focused on fostering related EI skills such as social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. SEL refers to a large foundation of research in educational psychology (e.g., Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011) which in part involves understanding the process by which individuals acquire core competencies to recognize and manage emotions (Elias et al., 1997; see also Chap. 7 by Hoffmann, Ivcevic, & Brackett, this volume). To foster social skills and emotional development, many educational institutions have attempted to implement SEL programs in the past (Humphrey, 2013; see also Chap. 8 by Humphrey, this volume), yet theorizing of SEL has only recently considered the element of culture in the development of teaching tools and the assessment of SEL (Martin, Collie, & Frydenberg, 2017; Torrente, Alimchandani, & Aber, 2015). In accordance with what we have discussed throughout this chapter, culture can play a pivotal role in dictating what SEL entails. To give one example, the history and belief systems prevalent in certain Asian cultures (e.g., Confucianism) emphasize the recognition and management of negative emotions much more than Western cultures, suggesting that negative emotions should be considered an important element of SEL programs in non-Western contexts (Martin, Collie, & Frydenberg, 2017). In contrast, the development of SEL programs in an entirely Western setting may not require the same level of focus on negative emotions for success in developing emotional competency. Much like the application of EI in workplace settings, when researchers and educational institutions seek to apply strategies for developing SEL , we believe it would be unwise to ignore the varied cultural perspectives on what constitutes successful social and emotional skills.

When attempting to apply a newfound awareness of the differences in emotion processes across cultures, we cannot stress how important it is to avoid viewing people as cultural stereotypes . Although interdependent cultures are more likely to suppress their emotions and minimize their emotional expression, people from such cultures will vary in the degree to which they do this. In the same way, not all people from an independent culture will be equally expressive or engage in reappraisal. Further, cross-cultural exposure may lead to a mixture of emotion regulation strategies, so that certain situations elicit emotion suppression, whereas others elicit emotion expression (Bonanno, Papa, Lalande, Wetphal, & Coifman, 2004). As such, it is important to recognize ways in which culture may shape people’s emotional experiences and emotion processes more generally but to acknowledge at the same time that substantial variation exists, even within cultures.

We have only begun to scratch the surface of cultural implications in EI application and assessment. Without direct research, it is unclear how exactly different facets of EI abilities are encouraged or discouraged in various cultural contexts . What is clear, though, is that cultural influences should not be disregarded when applying or assessing EI. Future research should address the limitations of cross-cultural validation of ability EI assessments. For those looking to implement and understand insights concerning EI in their educational setting, it is important to recognize that “appropriate” emotion responses vary by culture and that there is no single, correct way to understand emotions. Understanding cultural differences in emotion is critical to begin to appreciate what having high or low EI might mean.

Conclusion

As this chapter demonstrates, emotion processes vary substantially as a function of cultural differences. These differences, however, have largely been neglected in the study of EI. We see this as a major limitation of the EI construct and suggest that, without considering cultural differences in emotion processes, current EI models lack the breadth to address the broad range of effects on leadership, well-being, and relationships they purport to explain. To address this limitation, in future research scholars should incorporate cross-cultural considerations into models of EI, and researchers should acknowledge the cultural context within which their work is situated, being careful to avoid generalizing beyond the cultural bounds of their results.