Is expressive suppression harmful for Chinese American breast cancer survivors?

Emotion regulation strategies are important for cancer survivors' adjustment. Expressive suppression, defined as the active effort of inhibiting the expressive component of an emotional response, has been found to be a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. These studies, however, have been limited to cross-sectional designs and primarily European American samples. Chinese culture encourages emotion suppression to preserve interpersonal harmony and therefore it may be important to test these emotion regulation processes with this population.
Source: Journal of Psychosomatic Research - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research