Neural underpinnings of the role of dialecticism in processing positive emotions

Previous findings suggest that dialecticism leads to the emphasis of negative aspects of positive emotions and the down-regulation of positive emotions in cultures having a background strong in dialecticism. However, there is little neurological evidence linking dialecticism and positive emotion processing. In the present study, we examined the relationship between dialecticism and positive emotion processing with event-related brain potentials. The results showed that (1) P2, P300, LPP 600–1000 and LPP 1000–1500 were larger for positive emotion in social context stimuli as compared to positive emotion stimuli. (2) P300 and LPP 300–600 in all conditions were found to be negatively correlated with the scores of dialecticism. People with higher dialecticism scores had smaller P300 and LPP 300–600 amplitudes during processing of different positive emotional stimuli. The results provide neurological evidence that dialecticism influences the experience of positive emotions and affects how positive emotions are processed. Further implications are discussed.