Effects of Culture in Daily Stress Experiences

North Americans have been shown to share an independent social orientation, seeing the individual as independent from others, while East Asians have been shown to share an interdependent social orientation, seeing individuals as embedded in interpersonal relationships. Targeting this cultural difference, we compared the contexts to which European Canadians and Japanese experience stress in their daily lives. We asked 53 European Canadian and 50 Japanese undergraduate participants to recall daily experiences of stress in an interpersonal context involving others, or in a non-interpersonal context not involving others, and to rate the intensity of stress level and the perceived frequency of each context. Results showed that the more interdependent Japanese rated interpersonal and non-interpersonal situations as equally stressful and prevalent, whereas the more independent European Canadians rated non-interpersonal situations as more stressful and prevalent than interpersonal situations. This suggests that social orientation goals influence the contexts where individuals experience stress. Following up on these findings, we then compared how much stress the two cultural groups reported for selected Japanese and European Canadian interpersonal and non-interpersonal situations. We asked 64 European Canadians and 62 Japanese undergraduates to rate how likely they would experience stress mentally and physically in both cultural contexts. We found that the more interdependent Japanese respondents were more likely to experience stress mentally and physically both in interpersonal and non-interpersonal situations whereas the more independent Euro-Canadians were more likely to experience stress mentally and physically in non-interpersonal situations than interpersonal situations. Further, we found that social orientations mediated cultural differences in interpersonal stress. Results are discussed in terms of how social orientation differences affect our daily stress experiences.