Overview
I study subjective well-being, or what most people call 'happiness.' Under this broad umbrella, I am interested in several questions such as What is a good life? What are the cultural differences in happiness and emotions and why are some societies happier than others? How do our memories impact our overall life satisfaction? How do we store information about emotions? Some of these projects are described below.
The Good LifePresumably 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--in the United States and beyond. 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.
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Memory for EmotionsI 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.
This research has used multi-method approaches to measuring emotion including experience sampling methodology. My lab has also used cognitive reaction time paradigms to understand how people organize their affective memories. |
Culture and EmotionWhy are people in some cultures happier than others? Are cultural differences in emotion due to measurement artifacts? The emotion words researchers choose? The way different cultures remember emotions? When are cultural differences in emotion greatest? How do social values relate to the experience and memory of emotions?
My research seeks to address these issues. In 2011, I proposed a framework for understanding cultural differences in self-reported emotion, when and why they are more likely to occur (Scollon, Koh, & Au, 2011). |