A factor-analytic study of cross-cultural differences in emotional rumination and emotional inhibition

The aim of the present study was to explore cross-cultural differences in e motion control, using the Emotion Control Questionnaire [ECQ - Roger, D., & Najarian, B. (1989). The construction and validation of a new scale for me asuring emotional control. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 845- 853]. The ECQ has been extensively validated on English samples, but rather than using the original published factor structure to derive mean scores, the study was based on comparisons between new factor analyses of ECQ data obtained from comparable samples of English, Spanish and Korean subjects. C onsistent differences emerged, suggesting that the Korean subjects in parti cular differed in the way they construed emotional behaviour. Subsequent co nfirmatory factor analyses suggested that a two-factor model comprising emo tional inhibition and emotional rumination offered the best fit for the dat a across all three samples, and new scales based on these findings are prop osed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.