Considering Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist influences on daily emotion regulation and affect in Chinese Australian trauma survivors.

ABSTRACTBackground: Confucianist, Buddhist and Taoist teachings offer insight into emotion processing for members of East Asian cultures. Emerging research also suggests distinguishing Confucianism into restrictive (focused on restricting self-needs for the greater good), and empowering (emphasising self-improvement) facets, and this distinction may be relevant for emotional processes. However, research has not considered how endorsement of these teachings influence emotion regulation among East Asian trauma survivors.Objective: This study presents a secondary analysis from a larger study on cultural differences in emotion regulation, and explored how levels of adherence to these teachings influence daily emotion regulation and affective outcomes among Chinese Australian trauma survivors.Method: Chinese Australian trauma survivors (n = 49) completed a baseline questionnaire assessing trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology and endorsement of Confucianism (restrictive and empowering), Buddhism, and Taoism. Participants then completed ecological momentary assessments (EMA) measuring daily use of suppression, acceptance and interpersonal emotion regulation and both positive and negative affect over seven days.Results: First, Taoism was positively associated with the use of daily acceptance, and Buddhism was positively associated with daily use of interpersonal emotion regulation. Second, Taoism moderated the positive relationship between acceptance and positive affect, whereby the strength of this association increased as Taoism endorsement increased. Taoism also moderated the relationship between interpersonal emotion regulation and both positive and negative affect, such that the associations were only significant for participants with higher levels of Taoism. Both restrictive and empowering Confucianism also moderated the negative association between acceptance and negative affect, with this association only being significant for individuals with low levels of empowering Confucianism and high levels of restrictive Confucianism.Conclusions: Our findings provide preliminary indications that the Three Teachings of East Asia may influence emotion regulation and associated affective outcomes among Chinese trauma survivors, highlighting a need for further research.