The influence of gender and cultural values on savoring in Korean undergraduates
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v7i2.598Keywords:
savoring, gender, Confucianism, cross-culturalAbstract
The present study investigated antecedents of savoring beliefs and responses in a sample of South Korean college students. Historically, Korea has been strongly influenced by Chinese Confucianism, which emphasizes not only gender-role differentiation and patriarchal norms, but also the dampening of emotions as a culturally appropriate style of positive emotional regulation. We hypothesized that Korean females, relative to males, would reject traditional Asian cultural values in order to gain more empowerment, and would, as a result, report a greater capacity to savor positive experience. Confirming the hypotheses, Korean women, compared to men, reported stronger disagreement with traditional Asian values, greater overall savoring ability, greater capacity for cognitive elaboration, and less use of dampening and greater use of amplifying as savoring responses to positive events. Path analyses supported our hypothesized mediational model in which Korean women, relative to men, more strongly rejected traditional Asian values, which predicted less dampening (but only marginally greater amplifying). We conclude that among young Korean adults: (a) savoring is a relevant concept; (b) traditional Asian values tend to promote dampening of positive emotions; and (c) women more strongly reject traditional cultural values, tend to engage in less dampening and greater amplifying, and perceive greater savoring capacity, relative to men.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. The license prevents others from using the work for profit without the express consent of the author(s). The license also prevents the creation of derivative works without the express consent of the author(s). Note that derivative works are very similar in nature to the original. Merely quoting (and appropriately referencing) a passage of a work is not making a derivative of it.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).