| The purpose of this study was to explore how culture impacts emotional regulation processes in healthcare workers after patient death. This international study was conducted across cultures in Denmark and the United States. The research was framed within international psychology, carried out through a cross-cultural approach, and had applications for global psychology. A phenomenological approach was utilized to explore the phenomenon of culture-based emotional regulation with five healthcare workers in Denmark and five in the United States. The results offered many similarities in the experience of patient death, including the positive relationship between the healthcare worker and patient, the emotional impact with loss and suffering, and the protective buffers insulating the healthcare worker. The points of critical distinction in the results explained how specific aspects of culture were infused into the healthcare workers' paradigms to find emotional equilibrium through acceptance, meaning, and purpose during and after the emotional impact of patient death. These paradigms included patient quality of life in the United States, philosophical undertones in Denmark, and religious and spiritual influence in both, but primarily in the United States. Both sample populations presented cognitive reappraisal as the most commonly used emotional regulation strategy. However, the specific distinctions of culture influenced how meaning was found for each population during the reappraisal process. In conclusion, this research supports the stance of moderate relativism when conceptualizing psychological processes as either universal or relativistic in nature. |
