Culture and memory for emotional experiences: On-line vs. retrospective judgments of subjective well-being

Five studies were conducted to examine the genesis of cultural differences in global reports of well-being. The first three studies were designed to determine whether cultural differences in emotional experiences would emerge at the time of actual experience or at the time of retrospective judgments, using diverse methods from a scenario rating task (Study 1), to a daily diary method (Study 2) and an experience sampling method (Study 3). The results of Studies 4 and 5 were designed to examine the memory, conscious weighting, and non-conscious weighting hypotheses. The results indicate that although there were no cultural differences in on-line experiences of well-being, European Americans tended to report a higher degree of well-being than did Asian Americans in retrospective reports. Studies 4 and 5 also indicate that these cultural differences are not due to explicit memory for emotional events or conscious weighting of positive vs. negative information. Rather, the cultural difference in retrospective reports of well-being appears to be due to non-conscious weighting of positive vs. negative information.