Cheung Yan Lok’s (Janet) research paper was titled Cultural differences in psychological well-being: The sequential mediating effects of cultural values, experiential avoidance, and self-compassion.
Cheung Yan Lok (Janet)
Having attended Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong, Janet received a unique education alongside students from over 150 different countries. Through intercultural experiences and collaborative living with classmates from all over the world, Janet developed an interest in understanding and promoting cultural diversity. She observed that students from Western countries regulate their emotions when encountering life adversities differently when compared to students from Eastern countries.
Since people from different cultures uphold different values, Janet further researched how values and emotion regulation strategies could have an effect on Hong Kong Chinese and American’s psychological well-being. Janet administered structured questionnaires on 81 American and 80 Hong Kong Chinese participants ranging from 18 to 30 years of age. She analysed and studied the psychological well-being of people from America and Hong Kong in terms of values and two emotion regulation strategies – experiential avoidance and self-compassion.
Her study found that Americans showed a higher level of psychological well-being when compared to Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong Chinese emphasized conformity to a greater extent than Americans, which increased the use of experiential avoidance, consequently resulting in lower psychological well-being. In contrast, Americans emphasized universalism-tolerance to a greater extent, which increased their use of self-compassion to regulate their emotions, consequently resulting in higher psychological well-being. The study’s results suggest that the difference in the level of psychological well-being between Americans and Hong Kong Chinese is due to the emphasis of different cultural values and the adoption of different emotion regulation strategies.