The relationship between momentary emotions and well-being across European Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans

ABSTRACT

Cultural differences in the emphasis on positive and negative emotions suggest that the impact of these emotions on well-being may differ across cultural contexts. The present study utilised a momentary sampling method to capture average momentary emotional experiences. We found that for participants from cultural contexts that foster positive emotions (European Americans and Hispanic Americans), average momentary positive emotions predicted well-being better than average momentary negative emotions. In contrast, average momentary negative emotions were more strongly associated with well-being measures for Asian Americans, the group from a cultural context that emphasises monitoring of negative emotions. Furthermore, we found that acculturation to American culture moderated the association between average momentary positive emotions and well-being for Asian Americans. These findings suggest the importance of culture in studying the impact of daily emotional experiences on well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Positive emotions
• negative emotions
• culture
• momentary sampling method
• life satisfaction
• depressive symptoms

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Erin Morris, Valeria Palacios, Emily Shaw, Elizabeth Christiani, and Katerina Maylock for their assistance with data collection and writing. The authors acknowledge that they have no actual or potential financial interests or benefits arising from the direct application of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Russian Americans were recruited as another cultural group for this study. However, due to the limited sample size (n = 20) Russian Americans were not included in the analyses for this paper. The present paper presents a partial data set from a larger study that assessed other measures.

2. European Americans were born in the US and had parents of Western European descent who were born and raised in the US. Asian Americans were born in the US or East Asian countries (China, Korea, and Japan), and had parents of East Asian descent who were born and raised in East Asian countries. Hispanic Americans were born in the US or in Central or South America and had parents of Hispanic descent who were born and raised in Central or South America. Asian American and Hispanic American participants were also selected based on their indication that they were proficient in their own native languages. The fluency level of native language was measured with ratings of speaking, writing, and understanding fluency (1 = “not at all” and 5 “extremely well”). These ratings were high, M =  4.16 (SD = 0.91) for Asian Americans and M = 4.72 (SD = 0.52) for Hispanic Americans. See Table 1 for demographics.

3. We conducted the same analysis that examined the moderating effect of acculturation level using GEQ-E scores for both Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. The model was not significant for Hispanic Americans for life satisfaction, R² = .34, F(5, 18) = 1.87, p = .150, and depressive symptoms, R² = .27, F(5, 18) = 1.33, p = .297. As for Asian Americans, similar results from the previous analysis using GEQ-A were observed. There was a significant interaction between GEQ-E and average momentary positive emotions, B = –1.41, β = –0.37, SE = 0.61, t = –2.31, p = .030, indicating that the positive relationship between average momentary positive emotions and life satisfaction becomes weaker as GEQ-E score increases.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Georgetown University's Pilot Research Project Grant.