How Do East Asians Perceive and Cope with Psychological Distress and Stressful Situations? A Cultural-Psychological Perspective

In this chapter, we describe the theoretical framework of cultural psychological research on self, attentional styles, interpersonal relationships, and emotional expressivity and highlight findings on cultural differences on the symptoms of psychological distress, the perception of stressful situations, and the appropriate form of social support. The previous findings suggest that East Asians are more likely than Westerners to emphasize somatic experience and perceive interpersonal situations (e.g., interpersonal friction) as more stressful. Moreover, East Asians are less likely than Westerners to seek social support when they need help to cope with difficult situations, based on concern over disrupting social networks, which is a negative outcome of interdependent orientation for maintaining harmonious relationships. Finally, we discuss implications for future research in terms of the necessity of further investigations within Asian cultures to generalize the findings and cross-cultural examinations of genetic variants’ potential effects on socioemotional tendencies with sufficient sample sizes.