The Contribution of Individualism vs. Collectivism to Cross-national Differences in Display Rules

Despite the fact that display rules are an important concept of theories of emotion and contemporary psychology, relatively little cross‐cultural research has been done on them. This study examined cross‐national differences in display rules of emotion, and investigated the degree to which those differences could be attributed to Individualism and Collectivism (IC) measured on the individual level. Participants in the US, Japan, South Korea, and Russia completed a comprehensive measure of display rules assessing behavioral tendencies for seven universal emotions in four social contexts in two rating domains. They also completed Matsumoto et al.’s (1997) Individualism–Collectivism Interpersonal Assessment Inventory. The results confirmed the existence of cross‐national differences in IC and display rules, and indicated that IC and display rules were correlated. Significant differences between the countries remained even after IC was controlled for, and effect size analyses comparing cross‐national differences when IC was controlled and not indicated that IC accounted for approximately 30% of the effect sizes related to cross‐national differences. This study is unique in that it not only used the concept of IC to explain and predict differences; it also quantitatively assessed the degree to which IC contributed to those differences. These findings are discussed in terms of the utility of the IC concept to understanding cross‐cultural and cross‐national differences in emotion.