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Emotion and intercultural adjustment 89

To examine whether the ICAPS ER scores were empirically related to Hof-
stede’s UA and McCrae’s Neuroticism, we computed country-level correlations
between them. ICAPS ER was marginally negatively correlated with UA,
r(47) = –0.20, p < 0.10, indicating those countries with higher ER scores had
lower UA scores, as expected. ICAPS ER was also negatively correlated with
Neuroticism, r(29) = –0.49, p < 0.01, indicating that countries with higher ER
scores had lower Neuroticism scores, as expected.
Several other studies have measured ER or concepts related to it across cul-
tures, and provide further hints as to its cultural variability. Matsumoto and his
colleagues (2003b), for instance, reported two studies in which they administered
the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross and John 2003), a ten-item scale
that produces scores on two subscales, Reappraisal and Suppression. Americans
had significantly higher scores than the Japanese on Reappraisal, while the Japan-
ese had significantly higher scores on Suppression. In that same report, the Ameri-
cans also had significantly higher scores than the Japanese on the ICAPS ER
scale, while the Japanese had significantly higher scores on the Neuroticism scale
of the NEO-PI-R. These findings converge with the country listing of ICAPS ER
scores described above.
Finally a number of studies have documented cultural differences in display
rules (Ekman and Friesen 1969). These are rules learned early in life that govern
the modification of emotional displays as a function of social circumstance. Dis-
play rules are related to ER because they concern the management of the express-
ive component of emotion. The first study to document the existence of display
rules was Ekman and Friesen’s classic study involving American and Japanese
participants viewing highly stressful films in two conditions while being video-
taped (Ekman 1972; Friesen 1972). When viewing the stimuli alone, both Ameri-
can and Japanese observers showed the same emotions in their faces; when in the
presence of a higher status experimenter, however, cultural differences emerged.
While the Americans continued to show their facial signs of negative emotions,
Japanese observers were more likely to mask their negative feelings with smiles.
Subsequent cross-cultural research has continued to document cultural dif-
ferences in display rules. Elsewhere we (Biehl, Matsumoto and Kasri in press;
Matsumoto 1990) demonstrated how Japanese, Hungarians and Poles tended to
deamplify negative emotions to ingroup members but amplify positive ones
relative to Americans; they also amplify negative emotions to outgroups and
minimize positive ones. We have also documented display rule differences be-
tween the US, Russia, South Korea and Japan (Matsumoto et al. 1998), and
among different ethnic groups in the US (Matsumoto 1993). In our latest re-
search we have reported cultural differences among the US, Japan, and Russia
on display rules (Matsumoto et al. 2005).
Presumably other rules or similar types of mechanisms exist for other emo-
tion components. Hochschild (2001), for instance, has proposed the concept of