Wanting to maximize the positive and minimize the negative: implications for mixed affective experience in American and Chinese contexts.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies have demonstrated that European Americans have fewer mixed affective experiences (i.e., are less likely to experience the bad with the good) compared with Chinese. In this article, we argue that these cultural differences are due to "ideal affect," or how people ideally want to feel. Specifically, we predict that people from individualistic cultures want to maximize positive and minimize negative affect more than people from collectivistic cultures, and as a result, they are less likely to actually experience mixed emotions (reflected by a more negative within-person correlation between actual positive and negative affect). We find support for this prediction in 2 experience sampling studies conducted in the United States and China (Studies 1 and 2). In addition, we demons

SUBMITTER: Sims T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4729566 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature