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Culture, emotional inhibition, and somatization

Abstract:

This study aims at investigating associations between culture variables and emotion knowledge (focusing on knowledge reflecting emotional inhibition and somatization) in a questionnaire administered to 5080 subjects from 29 countries. The nation-level analysis investigated the association between various aspects of emotion knowledge on the one hand (including expressiveness, physical sensations, emotional inhibition, and somatization) and culture scales on the other hand, such as Hofstede's (1980) individualism-collectivism. The analysis of the culture scales revealed an unexpected inverse association between Hofstede's individualism and the study's own measures of individualistic attitudes. This was interpreted as being indicative of an especially strong new wave of individualism among students in traditionally collectivistic countries due to erosion of traditional values and the economic and social effects of globalization, a phenomenon described as "neoteric estrangement" (operationalized as high Hofstedian collectivism but high individualistic attitudes as measured by the study). Neoteric estrangement was associated with emotion knowledge reports reflecting high emotional inhibition, low expressiveness, high somatization, and low reported stress (the last having been found to be associated with inhibited emotional processing in interindividual studies). These results are discussed in terms of being evidence for the presence of more socially prescribed inhibition in traditionally collectivistic countries, and/or reflecting the idea that having an ambivalent relationship to the culture one lives in can induce emotional inhibition.