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An investigation of cultural variations in emotion experience, regulation and expression in two Scottish settings

Individuals from Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire and Glasgow/Greater Glasgow have anecdotally been thought to differ in their expression of emotion with the former group being thought to be less emotionally expressive that the latter. The current thesis carried out three studies to empirically examine this. A systematic review of measures of emotion experience, regulation, expression and alexithymia was carried out to establish their psychometric properties. The results of the review lead to recommendations for which scales to use within future studies of the thesis. The second study used measures of emotion experience (Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule), emotion regulation (Emotion Regulation Questionnaire) and alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20), identified within the review, in samples of adults from Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire and Glasgow/Greater Glasgow. A multiple indicators multiple causes model was used to examine group differences in response to these measures, this method allowed examination of differences on factor means and individual indicator items on the scales. It was found that Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire participants demonstrated a higher factor mean on the Negative Affect (NA) factor of the PANAS; the Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire participants also endorsed an individual item on the ERQ (Item 5) and the TAS-20 (Item 1) more than the Glasgow/Greater Glasgow participants. Finally, a qualitative study was carried out in which participants from each group recalled events related to six emotions. In describing events related to fear, anger and sadness, Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire participants tended to use positive statements that downplayed events related to these emotions, while the Glasgow/Greater Glasgow participants tended to use 'catastrophic' statements when describing events related to the same emotions. This may indicate differing cultural models between these populations.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:731619
Date January 2017
CreatorsDonnan, Gemma Louise Jean
PublisherUniversity of Aberdeen
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=234053

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