Sun, M., & Lau, A. S. (2018). Exploring cultural differences in expressive suppression and emotion recognition. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(4), 664-672. DOI: 10.1177/0022022118763749

Previous study has linked the practice of repressing emotional responses to long-term declines in social cognitive ability and interpersonal adjustment. Authors believe this could be because habitual suppression necessitates a fixation of attention on the self rather than on others. In the current study, researchers looked at the link between the habitual tendency to suppress one’s own emotions and the accuracy with which one can recognize the emotions of others. A limited-channel task with minimal emotional information and a multimodal full-channel task were used to measure emotion recognition accuracy. Researchers looked at cultural differences in this association since, for people of Asian heritage, expressive repression may be the norm due to cultural motives for social harmony and interdependence. Authors reported that their data revealed minor cultural differences between groups. In limited-channel emotion recognition, Asian Americans born in the United States outperformed Asian Americans born elsewhere and European Americans. In terms of interdependent self-construal, habitual emotion suppression, and full-channel emotion identification abilities, the three cultural groups did not vary. In the full-channel task, interdependent self-construal was linked to stronger habitual suppression and emotion recognition accuracy. Limited-channel emotion recognition was negatively related to habitual emotion suppression, but not full-channel emotion recognition. Authors reported no indication that the link between habitual suppression and emotion recognition differed by culture.