How the bereaved behave: a cross-cultural study of emotional display behaviours and rules

ABSTRACT

Cultural norms may dictate how grief is displayed. The present study explores the display behaviours and rules in the bereavement context from a cross-cultural perspective. 86 German-speaking Swiss and 99 Chinese bereaved people who lost their first-degree relative completed the adapted bereavement version of the Display Rules Assessment Inventory. Results indicated that the German-speaking Swiss bereaved displayed more emotions than the Chinese bereaved. The Chinese bereaved, but not the German-speaking Swiss bereaved, thought that bereaved people should display more emotions than they actually did when they were with their close others (but not when they were alone). Bereaved people endorsed more emotional expression “when alone” than “when with close others”, demonstrating a social disconnection tendency, which was more evident in the Chinese sample. Bereaved people endorsed more expression of positive emotions (e.g. affection/love) and less expression of powerful negative emotions (e.g. blame/guilt, anger) across cultures. Compared to their Chinese counterparts, the German-speaking Swiss sample indicated more actual expressions for most emotion types (i.e. joy/happiness, affection/love, sadness, anger, and denial) but thought bereaved people should express more joy/happiness and less blame/guilt. The results suggest that bereaved people’s display behaviours and rules are influenced by culture, situation, and type of emotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Display rules
• display behaviours
• cross-culture
• bereavement

Data availability statement

All research materials, data, and analysis scripts are available at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/nhszr/?view_only = 482056a21615422c835529290db5ce6a).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the current study, we did not involve the behavioral response of “qualify”, as it was found to be difficult to comprehend and unrelated to criterion variables in previous studies.

Additional information

Funding

N.N.Z is funded by the Shanghai Pujiang Talents Program (21PJC038), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M691039), the National Social Science Foundation of China (21CSH091), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (43800-20101-222104). K.V.S. is funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/V001841/1) and the Oxford Health NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (KS NIHR203316). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. J.Z.X. is funded by the National Social Science of Foundation of China (18BSH129).