Keep It In, or Let It Out? Emotion Regulation and Perceived Stress Across Individualistic and Collectivistic Cultures

The relationship between emotion regulation strategies and perceived stress has been explored between collectivist and individualist cultures. However, a major limitation of these studies has been the reliance on a single country's sample to represent an entire cultural category. Using a comparative design and including participants from a variety of countries, this study examined cultural differences in the use of two different emotion regulation strategies (expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal) and their association with perceived stress. A total of 183 adult participants (109 from collectivist cultures, such as China, Japan and Nigeria, and 74 from individualistic cultures, such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany) completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Perceived Stress Scale online. Results showed that the use of cognitive reappraisal did not differ between collectivist and individualist groups, but they differed in the use of expressive suppression. In addition, no cultural differences were found in the association between cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression and perceived stress. The lack of differences in the use of cognitive reappraisal, and the lack of a predictive role of emotion regulation strategies with perceived stress, may support the idea of a transcultural approach to deal with stress.