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Uncertainty Orientation and Affective Experiences

Individual Differences Within and Across Cultures

University of Western Ontario

John B. Nezlek

College of William & Mary

Satoru Yasunaga

Kurume University

Sadafusa Kouhara

Yamaguchi Prefectural University

Yasunao Otsubo

Fukuoka University of Education

Paul Shuper

University of Connecticut

This study examined whether people with the same self-regulatory style of coping with uncertainty differed in their affective experiences as a function of what may be the dominant coping style of their culture. Two hundred twenty men and women from universities in Japan and Canada described the extent to which they experienced various emotions. Consistent with their expectations, the authors found that participants whose uncertainty orientation matched that of their country (i.e., uncertainty-oriented students in Canada, certainty-oriented students in Japan) experienced more active emotions than mismatched participants (i.e., certainty-oriented students in Canada, uncertainty-oriented students in Japan), who experienced more passive emotions. Moreover, those who matched their country's coping style also reported experiencing more positive and fewer negative emotions than mismatched students. These results suggest that the theory of uncertainty orientation has important implications for research on affective experiences within and across cultures.

Key Words: emotions • uncertainty orientation • individual differences

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 2, 129-146 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0022022107312586


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