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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. © 2018 International Union of Psychological Science

Culture has a strong influence on how people evaluate and regulate their emotions. Previous findings suggest that Easterners tend to prefer controlling their emotions more than do Westerners. However, there is still little evidence on the prevalence of cultural differences in implicit attitudes towards emotion regulation. The goal of the present study is to investigate cross-cultural differences in the implicit and explicit attitudes towards emotion regulation to help bridge this gap in the literature. The sample consisted of 61 Chinese and 54 European Americans. Emotion Regulation Implicit Association Test (ER-IAT) was used to examine the implicit attitudes towards emotion regulation. Results showed that (1) Chinese implicitly evaluated emotional expression as more negative than European Americans; (2) Similarly, Chinese explicitly valued emotional expression as less important than European Americans. Further implications are discussed. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

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. © 2016 Deng, Ding, Cheng and Chou.