Happiness and Unhappiness in East and West: Themes and Variations
Happiness and Unhappiness in East and West: Themes and Variations
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DOI：
10.1037/a0015634
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发表时间：
2009-08-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
Kitayama, Shinobu
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Uchida, Yukiko;Kitayama, Shinobu
关于幸福和不幸福的民间文化模式可能对社会认知和社会行为有重要影响。然而，目前对这些模型的性质知之甚少。在这里，作者系统地分析了美国和日本参与者自发产生的两种情绪的描述，并观察到，正如预测的那样，美国人将积极的快乐体验与个人成就联系起来，而日本人则将其与社会和谐联系起来。此外，日本人比美国人更有可能提到社会分裂和先验的重新评价作为幸福的特征。正如预测的那样，与幸福不同，对不幸福的描述包括各种特定文化的应对行动：而美国人专注于外在行为（例如，愤怒和侵略），日本人强调先验的重新评估和自我完善。文化和情感的研究的影响进行了讨论。
Cultural folk models of happiness and unhappiness are likely to have important bearings on social cognition and social behavior. At present, however, little is known about the nature of these models. Here, the authors systematically analyzed American and Japanese participants' spontaneously produced descriptions of the two emotions and observed, as predicted, that whereas Americans associated positive hedonic experience of happiness with personal achievement, Japanese associated it with social harmony. Furthermore, Japanese were more likely than Americans to mention both social disruption and transcendental reappraisal as features of happiness. As also predicted, unlike happiness, descriptions of unhappiness included various culture-specific coping actions: Whereas Americans focused on externalizing behavior (e.g., anger and aggression), Japanese highlighted transcendental reappraisal and self-improvement. Implications for research on culture and emotion are discussed.