Relationship Between Emotional Expression Discrepancy and Life Satisfaction Across Culture and Personal Values

Abstract

People can experience a discrepancy between their ideal and actual emotions. We hypothesized that this emotional discrepancy would be associated with people’s life satisfaction, depending on their culture and individual emotional values. We tested this hypothesis across three cultures (the United States, Hungary, and South Korea) and three broad categories of personal values (hedonic, collaboration, and confrontation). Participants reported the levels of their ideal and actual expression of four discrete emotions (anger, excitement, empathy, and sadness), as well as their levels of life satisfaction and emotion-related personal values. A three-way interaction analysis revealed that the discr..