The role of culture and gender in the relationship between positive and negative affect

An integrative explanation proposes that culture and gender interact to pro duce fundamentally different patterns of association between positive and n egative emotions. People in independent-based cultures (e.g. the United Sta tes) experience emotions in oppositional (i.e. bipolar) ways, whereas peopl e in interdependent-based cultures (e.g. China) experience emotions in dial ectic ways. These patterns are stronger for women than men in both cultures . In support of the theory, Study 1 showed that positive and negative emoti ons are strongly correlated inversely for American women and weakly correla ted inversely for American men, but strongly correlated positively for Chin ese women and weakly correlated positively for Chinese men. In Study 2, fin dings for Koreans, although mixed, were closer to the results for Chinese.