Cross-cultural differences in self-reported and behavioural emotional self-awareness between Japan and the UK

• Published in: BMC research notes Vol. 16; no. 1; p. 380
• Main Authors: Huggins, Charlotte F, Williams, Justin H G, Sato, Wataru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 21.12.2023; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Adult; Alexithymia; Analysis; Awareness; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Cultural differences; Culture; Decision making; Emotional awareness; Emotional behavior; Emotional differentiation; Emotions; Gender; Health aspects; Humans; Intercultural communication; Japan; Psychological aspects; Regression analysis; Research Note; Self awareness; Self Report; Self-perception; Self-recognition; Japan; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; Emotional awareness; Emotional differentiation; Culture; Alexithymia
• ISSN: 1756-0500; 1756-0500
• DOI: 10.1186/s13104-023-06660-0

How we express and describe emotion is shaped by sociocultural norms. These sociocultural norms may also affect emotional self-awareness, i.e., how we identify and make sense of our own emotions. Previous studies have found lower emotional self-awareness in East Asian compared to Western samples using self-report measures. However, studies using behavioural methods did not provide clear evidence of reduced emotional self-awareness in East Asian groups. This may be due to different measurement tools capturing different facets of emotional self-awareness. To investigate this issue further, we compared the emotional self-awareness of Japanese (n = 29) and United Kingdom (UK) (n = 43) adults using the self-report Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), alongside two behavioural measures - the Emotional Consistency Task (EC-Task) and the Photo Emotion Differentiation Task (PED-Task). Japanese adults showed higher TAS-20 scores than UK participants, indicating greater self-reported difficulties with emotional self-awareness. Japanese participants also had lower EC-Task scores than UK adults, indicating a lower ability to differentiate between levels of emotional intensity. PED-Task performance did not show clear group differences. These findings suggest that cross-cultural differences in emotional self-awareness vary with the task used, because different tasks assess distinct aspects of this ability. Future research should attempt to capture these different aspects of emotional self-awareness.