The individualism and collectivism of culture characteristics and their influence on emotional contagion

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Chinese society is defined as "collectivism" in most studies, and most individuals under this cultural background present "interdependent" self-construction.
With the development of society and changes in propaganda and education models, the younger generation may show more "individualism" cultural characteristics, but they still maintain "interdependence" self-construction when defining relationship between themselves and others.
As a network of procedural and declarative knowledge, culture can influence individual behavior and emotion, especially emotional contagion, which is an emotional phenomenon triggered by the emotions from others.
In "collectivism" culture, individuals usually suppressed emotional expression to ensure harmony, while "interdependent" individuals often use other people's reference as the core to produce emotional experience.
The research aimed to explore the cultural characteristics of college students and their influence on emotional contagion. In study 1, we used the topics related with cultural characteristics in World Values Survey (WVS) to analyze the phenomenon of collectivism or individualism and self-construction of Chinese under 30 from 1994 to 2020.
In study 2, we used the "Individualism-Collectivism Scale", "Self-Construction Scale" and "College Students Emotional Contagion Ability Scale" to explore the differences in individual emotional contagion abilities with different cultural characteristics. The WVS result shows that (1) from 1994 to 2020, more and more individuals chosen to improve their skills in their free time, while less individuals chosen to meet friends. Which means an increasing tendency of individualism. It also shows that (2) the proportion of chosen "friends/family is most important" is relatively stable, indicating that the self-construction of "interdependence" is still maintained.
In general, nowadays, college students are "individualism" at the cultural level, while at the individual level they present the characteristics of "interdependence". With this cultural characteristic, individuals have a stronger ability of positive emotions contagion, and their contagion ability of anxiety even stronger. In this study, we explored the impact of cultural characteristics on emotional contagion, which provide support for improving positive emotional contagion and reducing anxiety contagion.