Research Interests
Broadly
speaking, my research is on Subjective Well-Being (SWB), which is the
scientific term for happiness. I have
been researching and teaching in this area for over 15 years. Specifically, I am interested in the role of
memory in SWB, and the influence of culture on happiness and conceptions of The
Good Life. I have also studied
psychological maturity over time and its relation to well-being.
Memory and emotion
I am interested in what influences people’s
recall of their past emotions.
Understanding memory for emotions is important because our conceptions
of our lives, especially meaningful (and therefore usually emotional)
experiences, are based primarily on what we recall. Additionally, most measures of emotion are
retrospective measures, so it is important to know whether such measures
accurately reflect momentary experiences.
In addition to retrospective measures, I use experience sampling
methodology which relies less on recall (Scollon, Kim-Prieto,
& Diener, 2003; Tov & Scollon, 2011). Respondents in my studies record their
emotions on palmtop computers at several random moments each day when signaled. Clear discrepancies have emerged between
retrospective reports and momentary or “on-line” reports. Rather than treating inaccuracies in recall
as error, however, my research seeks to uncover systematic mechanisms that
guide memory for emotions. For example,
I found that one’s emotional self-concept predicts memory for emotions, even
after controlling for on-line experiences (Scollon, Diener, Oishi, &
Biswas-Diener, 2004). In other words,
instead of searching their memories and summing up specific instances of
emotion to arrive at an estimate of their past emotions, people use heuristic
information such as the self-concept to inform their recall. In addition, this effect has been replicated
among different cultural groups.
Memory for emotions also determines the
choices people make, as my colleagues at Illinois and I have demonstrated. We had participants record their on-line
affect several times each day during their Spring Break vacations (Wirtz,
Krueger, Scollon, & Diener, 2003).
The best predictor of whether students wanted to take a similar vacation
in the future was not on-line emotion during the vacation, but rather their
memory for emotions. Moreover,
expectations about the vacation influenced memories. The same is also true for how students make
decisions about which courses to take.
The actual experience matters very little, whereas the memory drives
decision-making.
These findings challenge our conceptions of
happiness. Is happiness the sum of
pleasant experiences or pleasant memories?
Are people aware of the role of memory for emotions in their overall
happiness? A couple pilot studies I
conducted seem to suggest the answer to the latter is No. Respondents generally prefer happy
experiences over happy memories. It’s
possible that implicit theories of happiness emphasize maximizing momentary
pleasant affect, but perhaps not happy memories.
Culture and emotion
By using multiple measures of emotion, my
research provides an intricate picture of the emotional lives of individuals in
different cultures. In doing so, I hope
to uncover sources of cultural differences in subjective well-being (SWB), in
addition to illuminating the study of individual differences in emotion. Furthermore, I believe that challenges in
cross-cultural measurement can inform the measurement of emotion within
cultures.
On-line emotion. A robust and consistent finding in the
well-being literature is that individuals from Asian cultures tend to report
lower SWB than individuals from Western and Latin societies. However, most cross-cultural comparisons of
emotion have been based on recalled reports of emotion that are vulnerable to
memory reconstruction. Thus, without
on-line measures of emotion, it is unclear whether cultural differences in
emotion are due to differences in everyday emotional experience or differences
in memory for emotions.
One of my studies which examined on-line
and recalled emotions in European Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans,
Japanese in Japan, and Indians in India, represents one of the few attempts to
empirically establish base-rates of specific on-line emotions in different
cultures (Scollon et al., 2004). In both
on-line and retrospective measures, European and Latino Americans scored higher
on reports of pleasant emotion and lower on reports of unpleasant emotion than
Asian Americans, Japanese, and Indians.
However, on-line methods (especially for negative emotion) showed
smaller cultural differences than recall methods, suggesting that cultural
norms may have stronger effects on memory than on momentary experience. Groups also differed more in reports of
pleasant emotion than in unpleasant emotion, a finding that supports the notion
that pleasant emotions may be more influenced by culture and socialization than
unpleasant emotions. Particularly
striking cultural differences emerged on both on-line and recalled measures of
pride. European and Latino Americans
reported much more pride than Asian Americans, Japanese, and Indians. This finding resonates with cultural theories
that suggest that pride in individualistic societies is highly valued because
it emphasizes the uniqueness of the self.
Importantly, this research demonstrates that culture influences
momentary affective experiences as well as memory for emotions.
Structure of
emotion. The intersection
of culture and emotion also provides an opportunity to examine important
structural issues. One issue that my
research addresses is whether the relation between pleasant and unpleasant
affect varies by culture and by level of analysis. I have found that, regardless of culture,
pleasant and unpleasant feelings are negatively correlated in momentary
experience. However, at trait levels
(i.e., between-persons), pleasant and unpleasant affect are uncorrelated among
European and Latino Americans, and positively correlated among Asian Americans,
Japanese, and Indians (Scollon, Diener, Oishi, Biswas-Diener, 2005). In particular, individuals in Asian cultures
who experience a great deal of pride also report more guilt, sadness, and
irritation, a finding which might explain lower levels of SWB in Asian
cultures. This study highlights the
importance of studying emotion at both levels.
Most recently, my student Sharon Koh and I
explored cultural differences in the way people store or organize their emotion
memories (Koh, Scollon, & Wirtz, in press).
We used a reaction-time paradigm developed by Michael Robinson (see
Robinson & Kirkeby, 2004) that allowed us to
measure the cognitive representation of emotion memories among our respondents. We found that Singaporeans represented their
emotion memories around social relationships more so than Americans. However, this cultural difference was fully
mediated by emotional consistency.
Singaporeans were less emotionally consistent overall than Americans
(meaning, they tended to experience different emotions across different
situations), and their inconsistency led to organizing their emotions more
around social relationships. After all,
for someone who consistently experiences the same feelings in different
situations with different others, there is not much to gain from organizing
one’s emotion memories around social relationships.
Indigenous
emotions. Translation adds an extra challenge to the
study of emotion across cultures. For instance,
finding the same structure of emotion in different cultures is not sufficient
evidence for measurement invariance if the structures are based on English or
translated English emotions. Many
cultures have emotions that do not have English equivalents and cannot be
directly translated. By neglecting these
culturally “indigenous emotions,” we might inflate the chances of detecting
universal structure. Although indigenous
emotions have received treatment in ethnographic studies, my research is the first
to use experience sampling to track indigenous emotions (Scollon et al.,
2004). I cluster analyzed emotions in
Japan and India and found that indigenous emotions did not form distinct
clusters from the pleasant and unpleasant dimensions that are often found in
studies using translated English emotions.
This is important because it shows that pleasantness and unpleasantness
capture emotional experience in different cultures, and that indigenous
emotions are fairly well-represented by Western emotion words.
Personality
development: Increasing happiness and emotional stability over time
One obstacle to happiness is high
negative affect or neuroticism. After
all, neuroticism is a risk factor in virtually all mental illnesses. Thus, it follows that one way to become
happier might be to reduce one’s level of neuroticism. Unfortunately, for decades trait theorists
promoted the view that traits such as neuroticism were “fixed like plaster.” Similarly, high stability coefficients of
well-being measures were taken as evidence that a person’s happiness was merely
a reflection of personality. According
to this bleak view then, both happiness and emotional stability levels are
immutable. Fortunately, we now know that
such conclusions were based on a limited approach to change. Until recently, most studies of change have
focused on either stability or mean-levels of traits, both of which mask
important processes that may be occurring at the individual level. Few studies have measured change at the
within-person or individual level.
Scollon and Diener (2006) examined data from a longitudinal study (see Headey & Wearing, 1989) that tracked the SWB of over
1,000 Australians over 9 years. Using
growth modeling to estimate intraindividual
differences in extraversion, neuroticism, and life satisfaction over time, we
found that personality does indeed change at the individual level. More importantly, we identified systematic
ways in which change occurs. First,
growth in marital satisfaction and meaning in life accompanied growth in life
satisfaction. These effects remained
even after controlling for general increases in positivity. Second, decreases in neuroticism and
increases in extraversion over time were associated with increased work
satisfaction, meaning in life, and fitness and exercise. Third, although people in general decline in
neuroticism over time, having more negative life events attenuated this
decline. Thus, Freud was right after all
when he said that the key to happiness was in love and work. This research has potential to inform
interventions aimed at improving well-being.
Moreover, changes that occur at the individual level are, arguably, the
changes that matter most to people’s lives.
Folk theories of
the Good Life
Presumably people seek to maximize those
aspects that define the good life; therefore, identifying cultural conceptions
of the good life is fundamental to a science of well-being. My research examines folk theories of what
makes life worth living. Rather than
treating folk theories as error-ridden and uninformative, my research views
them as a rich source of meaning, representing the intersection of shared
beliefs and individual histories.
In a series of studies conducted with Dr.
Laura King, I asked participants to make ratings about the desirability and
moral goodness of a life as a function of its happiness, meaning, and wealth
(King & Napa, 1998). People rated
happy and meaningful lives as most desirable and morally good, and they rated
happy people as more likely to go to heaven.
Whereas researchers previously believed that people value money over
happiness, my research shows that people want happiness and meaning more than
wealth. In another set of studies, I
included effort or challenge as another feature of the good life (Scollon &
King, 2005). I found that folk theories
equated the good life with the easy life when effort was conceptualized as
number hours of work. Effort was rated an
important part of a meaningful and happy life only when effort was framed as
active engagement that was not energy depleting nor time-consuming. These folk concepts of effort suggest the
possibility that people value hard work in the context of the good life, but
only if active engagement does not come at the cost of other life interests.
These studies were the first empirical
attempts at mapping folk theories of the good life onto the SWB
literature. More recently, Dr. Derrick
Wirtz and I conducted a cross-cultural study of folk concepts of the good
life. Wirtz and Scollon (2012) found
that happiness and meaning were the main components of the good life in both
Singapore and the US. Remarkably, the
effects were virtually the same in the US over a decade later, and after the
great financial crisis of 2008. Cultural
differences also emerged. Although
Singaporeans valued happiness and meaning almost as strongly as the Americans
did, wealth also emerged as an important ingredient in their good life. Given the research showing the toxic effects
of materialism on subjective well-being, this valuing of wealth could be seen
as a clue to why Singaporeans are less happy than Americans (this was shown in
that study and in other data I have).
Following up on this, we conducted an experiment among Singaporean
participants in which we manipulated their perspective to be either 3rd
person or 1st person. For the
3rd person manipulation, participants wrote a brief biography of
themselves using the 3rd person.
For the 1st person manipulation, participants wrote a brief
autobiography of themselves using the 1st person. We found that the 3rd person
perspective led to a greater emphasis on wealth in the good life. This is consistent with research by Suh
(2007) who argued that a focus on the generalized other (i.e., seeing oneself
as others see you), causes people to focus on objective or shared notions of
what is good (in this case, wealth) as opposed to internal standards of what is
good (in this case, happiness).