Abstract:

Expressive suppression refers to the “conscious inhibition of one’s own emotionally expressive behavior while emotionally aroused”. Many studies have shown that expression suppression is not an useful or effective strategy. But what we should not ignore is that cultural factor is an important moderator between expression suppression and outcome variables. That is to say, expression suppression often plays a negative role in individualistic culture. While in collectivistic culture, expression suppression is not completely an inappropriate regulation strategy. This may be associated with cultural values, one's attitude to “face” and parents' way of coping with affairs. Future studies of expression suppression should be aimed at the role of expression suppression in collectivistic culture and different subculture. At the same time, it is necessary to pay more attention to the role of expression suppression and its cultural differences in academic domain and the diversification of sampling subjects.

Key words: expressive suppression, individualistic culture, collectivistic culture, cultural differences