Unraveling Chinese talk about emotion.

Research in cross-cultural psychiatry has asserted that Chinese people have a higher tendency to report somatic symptoms of their psychological distress than people with a European ethnic background. However, recent studies have reached inconsistent conclusions and most have confounded language use with culture in their study designs. Focusing on the varying degrees of orientation to Chinese culture, the present study examined the words freely listed by two Chinese groups of university students (mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese) when describing their illness experience. Words were categorized into somatic, emotion, and somatic-emotion clusters. Overall, the Chinese participants were more willing to talk about their emotions than their somatic symptoms in an anonymous survey. The enculturated mainland Chinese participants-who reported greater Chinese cultural identity-used significantly more emotion words but fewer somatic-emotion words than the Hong Kong Chinese participants. No group differences were found in somatic words. In contrast to previous findings, the current study failed to find support for the relationship between orientation to Chinese culture and somatic symptom reporting when controlling for language use.

Mapping Chinese Personality: An Assessment of the Psychometric Properties of the NEO-PI-3 in Monolingual and Bilingual Studies.

The NEO-PI-3 is a fourth-generation instrument that has been shown to improve the psychometrics and readability of its immediate precedent, the NEO-PI-R. We examined the psychometric properties of the Chinese versions of the NEO-PI-R and NEO-PI-3 using three datasets (Ns = 913, 299, 403) collected using both monolingual and bilingual designs. The Chinese NEO-PI-3 scales displayed a five-factor structure in which the facets had the highest loadings on their intended factors. The structure demonstrated strong invariance across both languages (English vs. Chinese) and gender groups, maintained high test-retest reliability, and attained slightly better internal consistency than the NEO-PI-R. We also examined the affective underpinnings of personality factors and well-being measures using the Chinese Circumplex Model of Affect. Consistent with past findings, Neuroticism and Extraversion were most related to affect, while Satisfaction with Life and Subjective Happiness shared the affective core of pleasant feelings and medium arousal. Based on these results, the Chinese NEO-PI-3 appears to be a sound instrument to measure personality in Chinese communities and to compare personality across cultures.

On the relationship between valence and arousal in samples across the globe.

Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neutral valence and increases with both positive and negative valence: a symmetric V-shaped relationship. In the study reported here of self-reported affect during a remembered moment (N = 8,590), we tested the valence-arousal relationship in 33 societies with 25 different languages. The two most common hypotheses in the literature-independence and a symmetric V-shaped relationship-were not supported. With data of all samples pooled, arousal increased with positive but not negative valence. Valence accounted for between 5% (Finland) and 43% (China Beijing) of the variance in arousal. Although there is evidence for a structural relationship between the two, there is also a large amount of variability in this relation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Emotional Anatomy of the Wuhan Lockdown: Sentiment Analysis Using Weibo Data.

BACKGROUND: On January 23, 2020, the city of Wuhan, China, was sealed off in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies have found that the lockdown was associated with both positive and negative emotions, although their findings are not conclusive. In these studies, emotional responses to the Wuhan lockdown were identified using lexicons based on limited emotion types. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to map Chinese people's emotional responses to the Wuhan lockdown and compare Wuhan residents' emotions with those of people elsewhere in China by analyzing social media data from Weibo using a lexicon based on the circumplex model of affect. METHODS: Social media posts on Weibo from 2 weeks before to 2 weeks after the Wuhan lockdown was imposed (January 9, 2020, to February 6, 2020) were collected. Each post was coded using a valence score and an arousal score. To map emotional trajectories during the study period, we used a data set of 359,190 posts. To compare the immediate emotional responses to the lockdown and its longer-term emotional impact on Wuhan residents (n=1236) and non-Hubei residents (n=12,714), we used a second data set of 57,685 posts for multilevel modeling analyses. RESULTS: Most posts (248,757/359,190, 69.25%) made during the studied lockdown period indicated a pleasant mood with low arousal. A gradual increase in both valence and arousal before the lockdown was observed. The posts after the lockdown was imposed had higher valence and arousal than prelockdown posts. On the day of lockdown, the non-Hubei group had a temporarily boosted valence (γ20=0.118; SE 0.021; P<.001) and arousal (γ30=0.293; SE 0.022; P<.001). Compared with non-Hubei residents, the Wuhan group had smaller increases in valence (γ21=-0.172; SE 0.052; P<.001) and arousal (γ31=-0.262; SE 0.053; P<.001) on the day of lockdown. Weibo users' emotional valence (γ40=0.000; SE 0.001; P=.71) and arousal (γ40=0.001; SE 0.001; P=.56) remained stable over the 2 weeks after the lockdown was imposed regardless of geographical location (valence: γ41=-0.004, SE 0.003, and P=.16; arousal: γ41=0.003, SE 0.003, and P=.26). CONCLUSIONS: During the early stages of the pandemic, most Weibo posts indicated a pleasant mood with low arousal. The overall increase in the posts' valence and arousal after the lockdown announcement might indicate collective cohesion and mutual support in web-based communities during a public health crisis. Compared with the temporary increases in valence and arousal of non-Hubei users on the day of lockdown, Wuhan residents' emotions were less affected by the announcement. Overall, our data suggest that Weibo users were not influenced by the lockdown measures in the 2 weeks after the lockdown announcement. Our findings offer policy makers insights into the usefulness of social connections in maintaining the psychological well-being of people affected by a lockdown.

Anchoring-and-Adjustment During Affect Inferences.

People can easily infer the thoughts and feelings of others from brief descriptions of scenarios. But how do they arrive at these inferences? Three studies tested how, through anchoring-and-adjustment, people used semantic and numerical anchors (irrelevant values provided by experimenters) in inferring feelings from scenario descriptions. We showed that in a between-subject design, people's inference was biased toward anchoring information (Studies 1 and 2). People made fewer adjustments (anchoring increased) under time pressure in the high-anchor condition but not in the low-anchor condition (Study 3). When inferring affect from scenario descriptions, not only did people integrate their inference with the context, they adjusted away from the initial anchors provided by the experimenters. However, time pressure discouraged people from making adequate adjustments.

The Relation Between Valence and Arousal in Subjective Experience Varies With Personality and Culture.

OBJECTIVE: While in general arousal increases with positive or negative valence (a so-called V-shaped relation), there are large differences among individuals in how these two fundamental dimensions of affect are related in people's experience. In two studies, we examined two possible sources of this variation: personality and culture. METHOD: In Study 1, participants (Belgian university students) recalled a recent event that was characterized by high or low valence or arousal and reported on their feelings and their personality in terms of the Five-Factor Model. In Study 2, participants from Canada, China/Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Spain reported on their feelings in a thin slice of time and on their personality. RESULTS: In Study 1, we replicated the V-shape as characterizing the relation between valence and arousal, and identified personality correlates of experiencing particular valence-arousal combinations. In Study 2, we documented how the V-shaped relation varied as a function of Western versus Eastern cultural background and personality. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that the steepness of the V-shaped relation between valence and arousal increases with Extraversion within cultures, and with a West-East distinction between cultures. Implications for the personality-emotion link and research on cultural differences in affect are discussed.

The emergence of sex differences in personality traits in early adolescence: A cross-sectional, cross-cultural study.

Although large international studies have found consistent patterns of sex differences in personality traits among adults (i.e., women scoring higher on most facets), less is known about cross-cultural sex differences in adolescent personality and the role of culture and age in shaping them. The present study examines the NEO Personality Inventory-3 (McCrae, Costa, & Martin, 2005) informant ratings of adolescents from 23 cultures (N = 4,850), and investigates culture and age as sources of variability in sex differences of adolescents' personality. The effect for Neuroticism (with females scoring higher than males) begins to take on its adult form around age 14. Girls score higher on Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness at all ages between 12 and 17 years. A more complex pattern emerges for Extraversion and Agreeableness, although by age 17, sex differences for these traits are highly similar to those observed in adulthood. Cross-sectional data suggest that (a) with advancing age, sex differences found in adolescents increasingly converge toward adult patterns with respect to both direction and magnitude; (b) girls display sex-typed personality traits at an earlier age than boys; and (c) the emergence of sex differences was similar across cultures. Practical implications of the present findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Are virtues national, supranational, or universal?

Many studies investigated cultural differences in values, most notably by Hofstede and Schwarz. Relatively few have focused on virtues, a related and important concept in contemporary social science. The present paper examines the similarities and differences between nations, or blocks of - culturally related - nations on the perceived importance of virtues. Adults (N = 2.809 students) from 14 countries were asked to freely mention which virtues they found important to practice in daily life, and next to rate a list of 15 virtues, which reflect the most frequently mentioned categories in The Netherlands, as found in a previous study. The 14 nations included the United States, Mexico, nine European and three Asian nations. For the free-listed virtues, we compared the top-ten lists of most frequently mentioned virtues across the nations. We used a correspondence analysis on the frequency table to assess the relationships between the virtues and nations. For the 15 virtues ratings, a MANOVA, and follow-up ANOVA's were used to examine effects of nation, age, gender and religion. We found strong evidence for relationships between nations and blocks of culturally related nations and the importance attached to various virtues. There appear to be some country specific virtues, such as generosity in France, but also some relatively universal virtues, most notably honesty, respect, and kindness.

The Inaccuracy of National Character Stereotypes.

Consensual stereotypes of some groups are relatively accurate, whereas others are not. Previous work suggesting that national character stereotypes are inaccurate has been criticized on several grounds. In this article we (a) provide arguments for the validity of assessed national mean trait levels as criteria for evaluating stereotype accuracy; and (b) report new data on national character in 26 cultures from descriptions (N=3,323) of the typical male or female adolescent, adult, or old person in each. The average ratings were internally consistent and converged with independent stereotypes of the typical culture member, but were weakly related to objective assessments of personality. We argue that this conclusion is consistent with the broader literature on the inaccuracy of national character stereotypes.

The within-subjects design in the study of facial expressions.

The common within-subjects design of studies on the recognition of emotion from facial expressions allows the judgement of one face to be influenced by previous faces, thus introducing the potential for artefacts. The present study (N=344) showed that the canonical "disgust face" was judged as disgusted, provided that the preceding set of faces included "anger expressions", but was judged as angry when the preceding set of faces excluded anger but instead included persons who looked sad or about to be sick. Chinese observers showed lower recognition of the "disgust face" than did American observers. Chinese observers also showed lower recognition of the "fear face" when responding in Chinese than in English.

Stereotypes of age differences in personality traits: universal and accurate?

Age trajectories for personality traits are known to be similar across cultures. To address whether stereotypes of age groups reflect these age-related changes in personality, we asked participants in 26 countries (N = 3,323) to rate typical adolescents, adults, and old persons in their own country. Raters across nations tended to share similar beliefs about different age groups; adolescents were seen as impulsive, rebellious, undisciplined, preferring excitement and novelty, whereas old people were consistently considered lower on impulsivity, activity, antagonism, and Openness. These consensual age group stereotypes correlated strongly with published age differences on the five major dimensions of personality and most of 30 specific traits, using as criteria of accuracy both self-reports and observer ratings, different survey methodologies, and data from up to 50 nations. However, personal stereotypes were considerably less accurate, and consensual stereotypes tended to exaggerate differences across age groups.

Threat advantage: perception of angry and happy dynamic faces across cultures.

The current study tested whether the perception of angry faces is cross-culturally privileged over that of happy faces, by comparing perception of the offset of emotion in a dynamic flow of expressions. Thirty Chinese and 30 European-American participants saw movies that morphed an anger expression into a happy expression of the same stimulus person, or vice versa. Participants were asked to stop the movie at the point where they ceased seeing the initial emotion. As expected, participants cross-culturally continued to perceive anger longer than happiness. Moreover, anger was perceived longer in in-group than in out-group faces. The effects were driven by female rather than male targets. Results are discussed with reference to the important role of context in emotion perception.

A 12-Point Circumplex Structure of Core Affect.

Core Affect is a state accessible to consciousness as a single simple feeling (feeling good or bad, energized or enervated) that can vary from moment to moment and that is the heart of, but not the whole of, mood and emotion. In four correlational studies (Ns = 535, 190, 234, 395), a 12-Point Affect Circumplex (12-PAC) model of Core Affect was developed that is finer grained than previously available and that integrates major dimensional models of mood and emotion. Self-report scales in three response formats were cross-validated for Core Affect felt during current and remembered moments. A technique that places any external variable into the 12-PAC showed that 29 of 38 personality scales and 30 of 30 mood scales are significantly related to Core Affect, but not in a way that revealed its basic dimensions.

Perceptions of aging across 26 cultures and their culture-level associates.

College students (N=3,435) in 26 cultures reported their perceptions of age-related changes in physical, cognitive, and socioemotional areas of functioning and rated societal views of aging within their culture. There was widespread cross-cultural consensus regarding the expected direction of aging trajectories with (a) perceived declines in societal views of aging, physical attractiveness, the ability to perform everyday tasks, and new learning; (b) perceived increases in wisdom, knowledge, and received respect; and (c) perceived stability in family authority and life satisfaction. Cross-cultural variations in aging perceptions were associated with culture-level indicators of population aging, education levels, values, and national character stereotypes. These associations were stronger for societal views on aging and perceptions of socioemotional changes than for perceptions of physical and cognitive changes. A consideration of culture-level variables also suggested that previously reported differences in aging perceptions between Asian and Western countries may be related to differences in population structure.

Studying affect among the Chinese: the circular way.

Past research on Chinese emotion has been plagued by the lack of a measurement map for affective feelings. In this article, I developed a fine-grained circumplex model of affective feelings that is arbitrarily defined by 12 segments. I created twelve 4-item self-report scales to measure affect felt during a clearly remembered moment (N = 395), and I cross-validated them twice with affect felt during the current moment (Ns = 269, 302). The structural and psychometric properties of these scales were strongly supported. The CIRCUM-extension procedure (M. Browne, personal communication, June 12, 1999) that places external correlates into the affective space showed that 28 of 28 mood states and 6 of 13 traits were significantly related to affect. External correlates did not clarify which of the affect dimensions were basic. The newly developed scales will serve as a useful tool in assessing affect among Chinese people and as a platform on which to extend the nomological net of affect.

Understanding the emotional aspects of escalation of commitment: the role of negative affect.

Despite the importance of understanding the emotional aspects of organizational decision making, prior research has paid scant attention to the role of emotion in escalation of commitment. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship between negative affect and escalation of commitment. Results showed that regardless of whether negative affect was measured as a dispositional trait (Neuroticism) in Studies 1 and 2 or as a transient mood state in Study 3, it was negatively correlated with escalation tendency when one was personally responsible for a prior decision. This pattern of results is consistent with the predictions derived from the coping perspective, suggesting that people seek to escape from the unpleasant emotions that are associated with escalation situations.

On the Relationship Between Circumplexes: Affect and Wiggins' IAS.

This article offers a new method to describe the relationship between two circumplexes, illustrated empirically with Wiggins' (1995) Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS) and Yik, Russell, and Steiger's (2004) 12-Point Affect Circumplex Scales (12-PACS). Michael Browne's CIRCUM-extension procedure was used to place each circumplex within the other. Simulations showed this procedure can reveal the number of dimensions of overlap between the two and can estimate the magnitude and location of the overlap. The IAS space overlaps the 12-PACS space on one axis, which falls at 35 degrees within the 12-PACS space (pleasant activated versus unpleasant deactivated) and at 71 degrees within the IAS space, which is close to where Extraversion (Factor I of the Five Factor Model) also lies.

Responses to formal performance appraisal feedback: the role of negative affectivity.

This study examined the effects of performance appraisal feedback on job and organizational attitudes of tellers (N = 329) in a large international bank. Negative affectivity moderated the link between favorable appraisal feedback and job attitudes. Among the higher rated performers, attitudes were improved 1 month after being notified of favorable appraisal results (Time 2). Improved attitudes persisted 6 months after the performance appraisal (Time 3) among tellers with low negative affectivity but not among those with high negative affectivity. Among the lower rated performers, mean levels of attitudes did not change significantly during the study.