Page 109 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Emotion and intercultural adjustment 87

other areas of improvement in terms of training needs. The ICAPS as a whole
and ER scores in particular can be used as an aid in personnel selection for over-
seas assignments or work in multinational, intercultural teams.
At the same time, the relationship between ER and adjustment is not perfect.
Some people who score very low on ER do adjust well, while some people who
score high on ER adjust poorly. While ER is undoubtedly one of the most im-
portant psychological skills related to adjustment, it is definitely not the only
psychological skill that contributes to adjustment. And psychological skills are
only one factor of many that contributes to adjustment. Other factors include
situational, environmental, and ecological variables, all of which affect adap-
tation and adjustment. ER is only one factor that contributes to adjustment out-
comes, albeit an important one.

4. Cultural differences in emotion regulation

Clearly ER is one of the most important skills necessary for intra- and intercul-
tural adjustment. Given that there are individual differences in ER (Gross
1999a, 2002; Gross and John 2003), one question that arises concerns whether
or not there are cultural differences in ER. This is an interesting possibility that
raises questions not only about intercultural encounters, but about the origins of
such skills. And it also leads to the possibility that people of some cultures that
are generally higher on ER would be better equipped to adjust well intercultur-
ally, while people of cultures typically lower on ER may be less suited for ad-
justment. These differences also implicate cross-cultural differences in intracul-
tural indices of adjustment, such as subjective well-being or anxiety.
In fact there are a number of previous studies that suggest that there are sub-
stantial cultural differences in ER. The earliest systematic cross-cultural data that
points in this direction is Hofstede’s seminal study on work-related values. One of
the cultural dimensions that Hofstede identified was Uncertainty Avoidance (Hof-
stede and Bond 1984; Hofstede 1980, 2001); this dimension is probably linked to
ER. Uncertainty Avoidance (UA) is defined as the degree to which people feel
threatened by the unknown or ambiguous situations, and have developed beliefs,
institutions, or rituals to avoid them. Cultures high on UA are most likely charac-
terized by low levels of ER, while cultures low on UA have high ER. Individuals
high on ER would tend to feel less threatened by unknown or ambiguous situ-
ations, and would be able to deal with such situations more constructively than
those with low ER, as discussed throughout this chapter. This suggests that people
from countries high on UA would have more difficulty in intercultural adjust-
ment, while people from countries low on UA would have relatively less diffi-
culty. In Hofstede’s study, the three countries highest on UA were Greece, Portu-
gal and Guatemala; the three lowest were Denmark, Hong Kong and Sweden.