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Cultural differences in desirable emotions powerfully impact brain activation and responses to specific stimuli. However, how people from different cultures process emotions in social contexts similarly and differently have not been adequately studied. Therefore, the present study examined cross-cultural differences in emotional processing of positive emotions in social contexts by using event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavior measurements. A total of 29 Chinese and 23 white Caucasians participants were recruited. A 2 (culture) X 2 (stimuli type) ANOVA was employed for both the neuro and behavioral data. The results showed P2 amplitudes were larger for Chinese than for Caucasians in the positive emotion in the social context condition. There were no significant differences in P2 amplitudes when processing positive emotion and neutral stimuli. For Chinese, the amplitudes of LPP 600-1000 of Chinese positive emotion in the social context stimuli were larger than positive emotion stimuli. For Caucasians, there was no significant difference among different stimuli. The higher P2 and LPP 600-1000 amplitudes suggested the salience and significance of positive emotions in social contexts for Chinese. Findings indicated that neural activation occurring during the processing of different positive emotions is moderated by participants' own cultural background. Further implications were discussed., Author(s): Xinmei Deng [sup.1] [sup.2] , Sieun An [sup.3] , Yuanyuan You [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.263488.3, 0000 0001 0472 9649, School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, , 518060, Shenzhen, [...]

The current study identified career-development profiles in a sample of 4815 Chinese adolescents (M[subscript age] = 16.19 years, SD = 0.67) and examined their associations with academic self-efficacy and academic motivation. The latent profile model was built on four facets of career development (career feeling, career belief, career exploration, and career planning). The results identified three profiles: "high career exploration and planning" (N = 225, 6.00%), "low career development" (N = 907, 22.13%), and "average career development" (N = 3224, 71.91%). Those showing "high career exploration and planning" showed significantly higher levels of academic self-efficacy and academic motivation than those showing the other two profiles. The results indicated non-monotonous patterns and asynchronous associations and developmental trajectories among the facets of career development among adolescents. Important implications for career education can be drawn based on the findings from the relations among career-development profiles, academic self-efficacy, and academic motivation.

Social avoidance refers to active non-participation in social activities, which is detrimental to healthy interpersonal interaction for emerging adults. Social rejection is a kind of negative social evaluation from others making people feel social pain. However, how socially avoidant emerging adults process social feedback information after experiencing social rejection has received less attention. The current study aimed to explore the differences in social interaction feedback processing after social rejection between a socially avoidant group (n = 16) and a comparison group (n = 16) in a human-to-human interaction context. Computer game tasks with two types of interaction (cooperation and competition) were used to record the event-related potentials when receiving social interaction feedback in two conditions (social rejection and control condition). The results showed that (1) the socially avoidant group had lower reward positivity amplitudes than the comparison group when receiving social feedback; (2) the socially avoidant group presented larger P300 amplitudes in the social rejection condition than in the control condition, but the comparison group did not; and (3) social rejection evoked more negative N1 amplitudes in the socially avoidant and comparison groups. The findings suggest that socially avoidant emerging adults may have flaws in reward sensitivity during interpersonal interaction, and they might also exert more attentional and emotional resources to social feedback after social rejection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building evaluation and guidance for naturally ventilated buildings rely on adaptive comfort models and standards. This study aims to establish an analytical and predictive thermal sensation and adaptation method. The proposed approach is based on the Griffiths method, which reveals a sinusoidal pattern in the neutral temperature and Griffiths coefficient throughout the year. Calculating the daily neutral temperature and evaluating thermal sensitivity through the Griffiths method highlight the delayed response of neutral temperature to outdoor temperature. With the input of operative and outdoor temperature, the Griffiths method predicts adaptive thermal sensation better than the PMV model. The regular fluctuations of neutral temperatures and Griffiths coefficients provide new research ideas and references for designing naturally ventilated buildings. Further research works are still required to check the method's applicability in the presence of various climate characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have suggested that academic stress has negative impact on adolescents' psychological function, few of those studies, however, considered whether and how the impact of stress on adolescents' emotional states is moderated by corresponding regulation. This study aimed to examine the fluctuation of emotional states before and after the mid-term examination and the influence of different emotional regulatory strategies. In the present study, 72 adolescents aged 12-18 reported their emotional states and corresponding regulation before and after mid-term examination up to six times over a period of two weeks. Results showed that: (a) On the sampling day, the participants reported increasingly emotional states as time went by. Improvement of adolescents' daily emotional states was more significant after the mid-term examination. Participants reported decreasingly positive emotional states and increasingly negative ones as time went by before mid-term examination. (b) Adolescents who used down-regulation at a certain sampling moment reported more pleasant emotional states at the subsequent sampling moment than those who used up-regulation. Adolescents who used more up-regulation in a negative emotional event reported more negative emotional states at the subsequent sampling moment after the mid-term examination.

There is growing interest in understanding how beliefs about emotion regulation are related to individual emotional experiences. Extant studies have mainly focused on explicit beliefs about emotion regulation among individuals in Western societies. The current study examined implicit emotion regulation and explored their contributions to emotional outcomes in 147 Chinese adolescents. Participants were tested on their implicit beliefs about emotion regulation and their negative emotion experiences. Results showed that the down-regulation was implicitly evaluated as more positive than up-regulation. Moreover, positive implicit beliefs about down-regulation increased with age. Among younger adolescents, those who evaluated down-regulation more positively had less negative emotional experiences. These results suggest that down-regulation may have important implications in Chinese culture.

The current study identified career-development profiles in a sample of 4815 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 16.19 years, SD = 0.67) and examined their associations with academic self-efficacy and academic motivation. The latent profile model was built on four facets of career development (career feeling, career belief, career exploration, and career planning). The results identified three profiles: high career exploration and planning (N = 225, 6.00%), low career development (N = 907, 22.13%), and average career development (N = 3224, 71.91%). Those showing high career exploration and planning showed significantly higher levels of academic self-efficacy and academic motivation than those showing the other two profiles. The results indicated non-monotonous patterns and asynchronous associations and developmental trajectories among the facets of career development among adolescents. Important implications for career education can be drawn based on the findings from the relations among career-development profiles, academic self-efficacy, and academic motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little neurological evidence linking sensation seeking and emotion regulation in adolescence, which is characterised as an emotionally fluctuant period. The present study examined the relationship between sensation seeking and emotion regulation in adolescents. Electroencephalograms were recorded from 22 high sensation‐seeking adolescents (HSSs, Mage = 12.36) and 24 low sensation‐seeking adolescents (LSSs, Mage = 12.84) during the reactivity and regulation‐image task. Group differences in event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) associated with the regulation of negative and neutral stimuli were analysed. The results showed that (a) the P2 of HSSs were larger than LSSs during emotion regulation; (b) in down‐regulation conditions, the LPP in all time windows were smaller than no‐regulation in LSSs. However, there was no significant difference in HSSs; (c) the LPP 300–600 and LPP 1000–1500 of down‐regulation were smaller in LSSs than HSSs; (d) for LPP 600–1000, HSSs induced larger LPP than LSSs in the negative down‐regulation and negative no‐regulation conditions. The results provide neurological evidence that higher sensation seeking is related to the high reactivity to emotional stimuli and poor cognitive control during the regulation of emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a multi‐ethnic country that is comprised of diverse cultural systems, there has been little research on the subcultural differences in emotional preferences in China. Also, little attention has been paid to examine how explicit and implicit attitudes towards emotions influence emotional preferences interactively. In this study, we manipulated explicit attitudes towards emotions among Han (N = 62) and Mongolian Chinese individuals (N = 70). We assessed participants' implicit attitudes towards emotions to explore their contributions to emotional preferences. (a) Han Chinese had lower preferences for pleasant emotions than Mongolian Chinese after inducing contra‐hedonic attitudes towards emotions, and (b) after priming contra‐hedonic attitudes towards emotions, the more Han Chinese participants evaluated pleasant emotions as negative implicitly, the less they preferred to engage in pleasant emotional activities. These findings contribute to the growing literature of subcultural differences and demonstrate that explicit and implicit attitudes towards emotions interactively influence individuals' emotional preferences between different subculture groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have suggested that academic stress has negative impact on adolescents’ psychological function, few of those studies, however, considered whether and how the impact of stress on adolescents’ emotional states is moderated by corresponding regulation. This study aimed to examine the fluctuation of emotional states before and after the mid-term examination and the influence of different emotional regulatory strategies. In the present study, 72 adolescents aged 12–18 reported their emotional states and corresponding regulation before and after mid-term examination up to six times over a period of two weeks. Results showed that: (a) On the sampling day, the participants reported increasingly emotional states as time went by. Improvement of adolescents’ daily emotional states was more significant after the mid-term examination. Participants reported decreasingly positive emotional states and increasingly negative ones as time went by before mid-term examination. (b) Adolescents who used down-regulation at a certain sampling moment reported more pleasant emotional states at the subsequent sampling moment than those who used up-regulation. Adolescents who used more up-regulation in a negative emotional event reported more negative emotional states at the subsequent sampling moment after the mid-term examination. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is growing interest in understanding how beliefs about emotion regulation are related to individual emotional experiences. Extant studies have mainly focused on explicit beliefs about emotion regulation among individuals in Western societies. The current study examined implicit emotion regulation and explored their contributions to emotional outcomes in 147 Chinese adolescents. Participants were tested on their implicit beliefs about emotion regulation and their negative emotion experiences. Results showed that the down-regulation was implicitly evaluated as more positive than up-regulation. Moreover, positive implicit beliefs about down-regulation increased with age. Among younger adolescents, those who evaluated down-regulation more positively had less negative emotional experiences. These results suggest that down-regulation may have important implications in Chinese culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late positive potential (LPP) has been well documented in predicting the effect of emotion regulation in previous developmental literature. However, few studies have examined age-related changes in emotion regulation from adolescence to adulthood using this biomarker. To test this, Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task was used to test 18 young adolescents and 22 adults to examine the modulation of LPP during emotion regulation. Results revealed that (a) on the behavioral level, adults reported higher intensity of emotional experience than adolescents when they were asked to use up-regulation. Down-regulation showed no age effect for self-reported rating; (b) adolescents showed higher amplitudes of LPP than adults when using different regulatory strategies in all windows; (c) In late time window, regulation effect was larger when using up-regulation strategy than down-regulation strategy for adolescents, while the difference between the two strategies was negligible for adults. (d) In early time window, reactivity effect was larger in negative conditions than in positive conditions for adolescents, while the difference between the two conditions was again negligible for adults. Differences in the amplitudes and time courses of LPP during emotion regulation between adolescents and adults suggested that age-related changes in emotion regulation may occur during adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fatigue is a common experience in everyday life. People who experience fatigue will have more intense negative emotions, and at the same time, their positive emotions will decrease, impairing the individual's emotional processing ability. In previous research, mindfulness meditation reduces the intensity of negative emotional stimuli. However, if individuals continue to be affected by negative emotions when they are fatigued, it is unclear whether mindfulness can buffer the negative association between fatigue and emotions. This study examined whether mindfulness meditation affects the association between fatigue and emotions, using event-related potentials (ERPs). One hundred and forty-five participants completed the experiment. They were randomly assigned to the Mindfulness or Non-mindfulness group; and they were presented with positive, neutral, or negative pictures in an emotional processing task before and after mindfulness or rest. Late positive potential (LPP) is an important indicator of emotional stimuli perceived by individuals, and positive or negative pictures can induce an increase in LPP amplitude more than neutral pictures. Our findings suggest that fatigue significantly affected individuals' LPP amplitudes in the early, mid, and late windows in the Non-mindfulness group, specifically, the more fatigued individuals had lower LPP amplitudes, but not in the Mindfulness group. These results suggest that in a state of fatigue, mindful individuals are able to maintain responsiveness to emotional stimuli by maintaining LPP amplitude. Our study has demonstrated that mindfulness meditation, to some extent, offsets the negative association of fatigue with the neural activation of emotions., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Fan, Li, Lin, Li and Deng.)

The immediate effect is an important index of the outcomes of emotion regulation. However, in daily life, whether the effect of emotion regulation lasts and the lasting mechanism have been examined less. The present research focused on the relationships between the immediate and lasting effect of the emotion regulation of adolescents. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from 51 adolescents (31 boys and 20 girls, Mage = 12.82) during online emotion regulation using the Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task (phase 1) and re-presentation of emotional stimuli after a period of time (phase 2). Event-related potentials (ERPs) related to emotion regulation, such as N2, P3, and the late positive potential (LPP), were examined in the two phases. The results showed that: (1) In both of the two phases, in negative emotion conditions, the amplitudes of P3 and LPP 300-600 of no-regulation conditions were significantly higher than those in reappraisal conditions. However, there was no significant difference under neutral conditions; (2) The amplitudes of P3, N2, and LPP 300-600 during emotion regulation in phase 1 positively predicted the amplitudes of P3, N2, and LPP300-600 in phase 2 in different experimental conditions. Results from the regression analysis implied that the immediate effect of online emotion regulation may predict the lasting effect when adolescents face the same emotions again. In addition, our findings provide neurological evidence that the use of cognitive reappraisal could effectively help adolescents to reduce the recruitment of cognitive resources when they regulate negative emotions and when they face those negative emotions again.

While previous studies have shown that East-West cultural differences exist in processing different emotional stimuli, potential subcultural differences within a large cultural group are not well understood. In this study, we examined subcultural differences in the event-related potential (ERP) modulations in the brain, during processing social positive and non-social positive stimuli among 21 Han Chinese and 21 Uygur Chinese. Results showed that the magnitudes of P2, N2, and late positive potential (LPP) were larger in Uygur Chinese than in Han Chinese. For social positive stimuli, the P2 and LPP 300-600 were larger in Uygur Chinese than in Han Chinese. However, there was no significant difference in non-social positive stimuli. These results indicated that social positive emotions were more prioritized in emotional processing among Uygur Chinese than Han Chinese. These findings contribute to the growing literature on subcultural differences in processing different types of positive stimuli.

Sometimes people experience pleasant and unpleasant emotions at the same time in a single emotional event. Previous cross-cultural studies indicated that such mixed emotions are more prevalent in China and related to the attitudes toward happiness and individual's regulatory motivation. However, China is a multi-ethnic country and not much is known about subcultural differences in mixed emotions. The aim of this study was to examine the role that implicit attitudes toward happiness and regulatory motivation played in regard of the subcultural differences in mixed emotions between Han ( N = 61) and Mongolian Chinese ( N = 46). Results indicated that, compared with Mongolian Chinese, Han Chinese showed stronger associations between implicit contra-hedonic attitudes toward happiness and mixed emotions during pleasant emotional events. Also, Han Chinese who reported contra-hedonic motivation during pleasant emotional events had higher levels of mixed emotions than those who had hedonic motivation. No significant differences were found in terms of mixed emotions between Mongolian Chinese who had contra-hedonic and hedonic motivation. These results suggest that the psychological mechanisms underlying differences in mixed emotions also require a more comprehensive understanding from a subcultural perspective.

The present study examined Chinese adolescents' emotion regulatory tendency and its effect, using an Experience Sampling Method. Participants comprised 72 Chinese adolescents (M age = 15.2 yr., SD = 1.7; 36 girls). Momentary emotional experience and regulation was assessed up to 5 or 6 times each day for two weeks. Results showed that participants tended to use up-regulation when they experienced positive emotion and habitually regulated their negative emotion by down-regulation. Also, adolescents who utilized down-regulation in a certain sampling moment reported higher positive emotion at the subsequent sampling moment. Moreover, adolescents who utilized down-regulation more frequently reported higher positive emotion at the subsequent sampling moment. Overall, down-regulation seemed to be a more adaptive regulatory strategy than up-regulation in Chinese adolescents' emotional lives.