22 March 2016

For immediate release

Innovative research into emotional responses

A CNWL Assistant Psychologist is set to present innovative research that could indicate the increasing impact of multiculturalism on people's emotional responses from different countries.

Aska Matsunaga, 22, from the Brent Addiction, Recovery and Clinical Centre (ARCC), analysed anger rumination (unintentionally engaging in recurring thoughts about anger episodes) and aggressive behaviour based on crowd-sourced samples from three countries - the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.

It is the first research in this field to be completed with an applied sample from more than two countries and has shown unique results on cross-cultural trends in relation to emotional expression.

It was also the first time work had been carried out to explore comparisons between the US and the UK.

Her results tallied with previous research showing higher levels of rumination among the Japanese and higher levels of aggression among the Americans but few significant differences between American and British participants and UK and Japanese participants.

However an unexpected finding was that Japanese samples reported the highest levels of anger and the lowest levels of verbal aggression and yet also reported the lowest levels of behavioural-inhibition, such as wariness and shame.

It was unexpected because cultural norms suggest Japanese culture disapproves of anger so it was presumed that higher levels of behavioural inhibition were required.

This could be suggestive of the influence Western culture has had on Japan.

She wrote: "What this means overall for the real world, is that we may now be witnessing a cultural shift, whereby western society disproportionately influences Japanese culture and consequently, clear-cut lines between east and west may have diminished over recent years."

Matsunaga warns that there are limitations to the research and the findings need to be treated with care.

She will be presenting her research during the 31^st International Congress of Psychology in Yokohama, Japan from July 24 to July 29. She graduated from the University of Kent last year.

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