Different emotional lives

Cultural differences in daily emotions were investigated by administering e motion questionnaires four times a day throughout a one-week period. Respon dents were American students, Japanese students living in the United States , and Japanese students living in Japan. Americans rated their emotional li ves as more pleasant than did the Japanese groups. The dimension of emotion al pleasantness (unpleasant-pleasant) was predicted better by interdependen t than independent concerns in the Japanese groups, but this was not the ca se in the American group where the variance predicted by interdependent and independent concerns did not significantly differ. It is argued that cultu ral differences in the concerns most strongly associated with pleasantness are related to differences in ideals, norms, and practices of what it means to be a person. Cultural differences in the concerns are assumed to implic ate differences in the nature of emotional experience.