CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON EMOTIONAL RESPONDING - CHINESE-AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN-AMERICAN DATING COUPLES DURING INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT

Ethnographic descriptions suggest that compared to European Americans, Chinese Americans place a greater emphasis on emotional moderation. T o assess whether such cultural differences influence actual emotional responding, we compared the physiological responses and reported affec t of 22 Chinese American and 20 European American college-age dating c ouples in an interpersonal context, that is, during conversations abou t areas of conflict in their relationship. Although some of our findin gs were consistent with ethnographic notions of greater emotional mode ration in Chinese culture (Chinese Americans demonstrated less variabl e and less positive reported affect and less variable cardiac interbea t intervals than European Americans), other findings were not (Chinese Americans and European Americans did not differ in most measures of p hysiological responding and in reported negative affect).