Cultural differences in the relations between expressive flexibility and life satisfaction over time.

Background: Expressive flexibility refers to the ability to assess situational demands and adjust one's emotion expressions via enhancement or suppression. It has been associated with lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms and greater social acceptance. These relationships, however, have not yet been examined across cultures-where prior research has found cultural differences in norms on emotion displays and their associations with mental health. This study examined expressive flexibility across three cultural groups and their associations with life satisfaction and depressive symptoms over time. Methods: 276 first-year college students (146 Asian American, 71 European Americans, and 62 Latinx Americans) completed two online surveys during the first (T1) and thirteenth week (T2) of the Fall 2020 academic semester. Results: Results revealed no significant cultural group differences in the ability to enhance or suppress emotions. However, we found a significant ethnicity x enhancement ability interaction in predicting T2 life satisfaction, controlling for T1 life satisfaction, age, gender, and emotion regulation frequency. Specifically, greater ability to enhance one's emotions was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction over time among Asian Americans, but not for European Americans and Latinx Americans. Discussion: Our findings illustrate the importance of not looking just at cultural group differences in the levels of expressive flexibility, but also at the associations between expressive flexibility and mental health.

Negative COVID-19 impacts and depressive symptoms over time among first-year college students.

Objective: This study examined the disruptions to social life, financial impact, and academic concerns caused by COVID-19 experienced by first-year college students, as well as their associations with depressive symptoms over time. Participants and Methods: Five hundred and thirty freshman college students completed an online survey at baseline and 14-week follow-up. Results: We found that female students reported greater COVID-19 academic concerns than males. Black students endorsed lower COVID-19 academic concerns and Latinx students reported greater negative COVID-19 financial impact compared to other ethnic groups. First-generation college students reported greater negative COVID-19 financial impact than domestic students. COVID-19 academic concerns and negative social and financial impacts were associated with greater depressive symptoms at baseline. However, only COVID-19 academic concerns were associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms over time. Conclusions: Findings suggest that the academic, social, and financial disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have negative mental health consequences that should be addressed in research and university settings.

Leaders' smiles reflect cultural differences in ideal affect.

Cultures differ in the emotions they teach their members to value ("ideal affect"). We conducted 3 studies to examine whether leaders' smiles reflect these cultural differences in ideal affect. In Study 1, we compared the smiles of top-ranked American and Chinese government leaders, chief executive officers, and university presidents in their official photos. Consistent with findings that Americans value excitement and other high-arousal positive states more than Chinese, American top-ranked leaders (N = 98) showed more excited smiles than Chinese top-ranked leaders (N = 91) across occupations. In Study 2, we compared the smiles of winning versus losing political candidates and higher versus lower ranking chief executive officers and university presidents in the United States and Taiwan/China. American leaders (N = 223) showed more excited smiles than Taiwanese/Chinese leaders (N = 266), regardless of election outcome or ranking. In Study 3, we administered self-report measures of ideal affect in college student samples from 10 different nations (N = 1,267) and then 8 years later, coded the smiles that legislators from those nations showed in their official photos (N = 3,372). The more nations valued excitement and other high arousal positive states, the more their leaders showed excited smiles; similarly, the more nations valued calm and other low-arousal positive states, the more their leaders showed calm smiles. These results held after controlling for national differences in democratization, human development, and gross domestic product per capita. Together, these findings suggest that leaders' smiles reflect the affective states valued by their cultures.