Abstract
To advance the understanding of the environment-human relation, the present research examined individuals’ emotional variability, which captures the fluctuation in negative and positive emotional states across environments. Specifically, we examined the relationship between holistic thinking and emotional variability across environments in three studies. Study 1 found that stronger holistic thinking was associated with greater emotional variability across natural environments, and this relationship was explained by stronger connectedness to nature. Study 2 replicated this pattern by including environments with more diverse characteristics as the stimuli. Study 3 further explored the potential moderating effect of the type of environment and the cultural background. The data of Chinese and American participants showed that the relationships of holistic thinking, connectedness to environments, and emotional variability across environments were more evident among Chinese participants while the type of environment had minimal impact. Implications for cross-culture environmental research were discussed.
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The data and materials that support the findings of this study are available in Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/vt4uk/?view_only=5574963cac77494cb16d5755f2fee23d
Notes
All three-way interactions, i.e., holistic thinking style ×Culture × Environment type, were not significant, ps > .15.
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Funding
This research was supported by the grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71701219), the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (16YJC190011), and the Internal Research Grant of the Education University of Hong Kong (RG 47/2018-2019R).
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Xia, W., Li, L.M.W. & Li, M. Holistic thinking and emotional variability across environments. Curr Psychol 42, 11207–11222 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02398-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02398-9