Culture and group-based emotions: could group-based emotions be dialectical?

ABSTRACT

Group-based emotions are experienced when individuals are engaged in emotion-provoking events that implicate the in-group. This research examines the complexity of group-based emotions, specifically a concurrence of positive and negative emotions, focusing on the role of dialecticism, or a set of folk beliefs prevalent in Asian cultures that views nature and objects as constantly changing, inherently contradictory, and fundamentally interconnected. Study 1 found that dialecticism is positively associated with the complexity of Chinese participants’ group-based emotions after reading a scenario depicting a positive intergroup experience. Study 2 found that Chinese participants experienced more complex group-based emotions compared with Dutch participants in an intergroup situation and that this cultural difference was mediated by dialecticism. Study 3 manipulated dialecticism and confirmed its causal effect on complex group-based emotions. These studies also suggested the role of a balanced appraisal of an intergroup situation as a mediating factor.

KEYWORDS:

• Group-based emotions
• in-group identification
• balanced appraisal
• dialecticism
• culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Disclosure statement. Sample size for this research was determined by analyses performed on the G*Power Program (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007). For a regression analysis (Study 1), a medium effect size was estimated for dialecticism for its effect of emotional complexity based on a prior study that uses the most similar design (Hui et al., 2009). In order to attain statistical power of 0.9, the required sample size was 73 participants. For a cross-cultural comparison (Study 2) and an experimental manipulation (Study 3), the effect of dialecticism is estimated to be large, based on a prior study (Spencer-Rodgers, Peng, et al., 2010). In order to attain statistical power of 0.9, the required sample size was 34 participants in each cultural/manipulation groups. In regards to data and measures not reported in the manuscript. Study 2, conducted as a part of the first author’s master’s thesis, originally included a condition in which participants read an intergroup insulting scenario. However, the Dutch participants in this condition reported stronger positive emotions than negative emotions, suggesting the failure of the scenario in depicting intergroup insult. With this issue, the data were difficult to interpret thus was not reported in the manuscript. In addition, Studies 2 and 3 originally included measure of participants’ positive and negative action tendency after reading the intergroup scenario. There was a significant cultural difference (Study 2) and condition difference (Study 3) in this measure, similar to the findings on the emotional complexity measures. Given that these the current research did not systematically examine implications of emotional complexity on intergroup behaviors, these findings are not reported.

2 In the literature, emotional complexity has also been computed by other formulas, such as PA+NA-|PA-NA| (Hui et al., 2009; Kaplan, 1972), or by the correlation between positive and negative emotions (Schimmack et al., 2002). In the current research, the former method resulted in the generally converging finding – however, as the formula does not consider the effect of dominant emotion, we did not choose this formula (for a similar decision, see Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004). With regards to the computation based on correlation (Schimmack et al., 2002), this method examines the extent to which the positive and negative emotions co-vary across different situations within individuals, rather than the co-existence of positive and negative emotions under a specific situation (Miyamoto et al., 2010). Because the latter is the focus of current research, this formula was not used.

3 Two findings are relevant to this claim. First, dialecticism was not predictive of balanced group-based appraisal (r = −.227, p = .109) or complex group-based emotion in the intergroup insulting condition. Second, participants in the insulting condition reported a higher level of emotional complexity (p < .001) and balanced appraisals (p < .001) than participants in the praising condition.

4 English was used following the norm of psychological experiments conducted at this university.

5 Study 1, point estimate = .023, 95% CI [.005, .056]; Study 2, point estimate = .097, 95% CI [.043, .192]; Study 3, point estimate = .051, 95% CI [.008, .112].

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant Numbers JP24653096, JP15K17143), and the Curtin University's School of Psychology and Speech Pathology Research Allocation Fund (SRAF-2014-54).