I love you but . . . : Cultural differences in complexity of emotional experience during interaction with a romantic partner

Studies suggest that emotional complexity*the experience of positive and negative emotion in response to the same event*is unusual in Western samples. However, recent research finds that the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotion during unstructured situations is more common among East Asians than Westerners, consistent with theories emphasising the prevalence of dialectical folk epistemology in East-Asian culture. The present study builds upon previous research by examining Asianand European-Americans’ experience of a particular positive emotion*love* and a situationally appropriate negative emotion during four structured laboratory conversations with their romantic partner. Among Asian Americans, love and the experience of negative emotion were typically less negatively correlated during these conversations than was true for European Americans.