Culture, Leisure Interpretation, and Ideal Affect during Leisure: A Situation Sampling Approach

Abstract

Definitions of leisure and emotional experiences during leisure vary across cultures, but have been understudied. To elucidate the relationships between leisure, emotion, and culture, we adopted a cultural psychology method called situation sampling. Using an onsite survey, we collected leisure and non-leisure situations from 126 Euro-Canadian and 149 Mainland Chinese undergraduate students. Employing an online survey, we then asked another 203 Euro-Canadian and 228 Mainland Chinese undergraduate students about their interpretation of, and ideal positive affect within, randomly sampled situations. Although both groups distinguished leisure from non-leisure situations regardless of culture, results of the mixed ANOVA indicated Euro-Canadians interpreted Canadian leisure situations as leisure more highly than Mainland Chinese did. Moreover, Chinese leisure situations were more conducive to positive engaging emotions (e.g., friendly) than Canadian leisure situations, and Chinese participants idealized this kind of affect in leisure situations more than their Euro-Canadian counterparts.

Keywords:

• culture
• ideal affect
• leisure meanings
• positive engaging emotions
• situation sampling method

Notes

1 To balance survey length, data needs, and respondent fatigue, we did not measure disengaging emotions. Future researchers should examine this type of affect along with engaging emotions.

2 Although the interaction effect was significant (see Table 4), it did not conflict with the results of the main effects.

3 The discrepancy between the ratio of Chinese leisure situations in Step 2 (80%) that includes others and the ratio of Chinese leisure situations in total (39.9%) may be a consequence of the small number of random situations sampled in our study.