Thesis
Emotion Suppression, Help-Seeking, and Culture
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
05/2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000007397
Abstract
There is large evidence suggesting a strong link between emotion suppression and poor mental health outcomes. However, how emotion suppression relates to one’s likelihood of seeking professional psychological help requires further exploration. Additionally, there are cultural variations on how emotion suppression is perceived and utilized. The current study sought to explore the role of emotion suppression on help-seeking and examine its cultural variations. Constructs related to emotion suppression were examined in this study, including self-disclosure and help-seeking attitudes and intentions. Self-construal was employed as a measure of cultural orientation and three types of self-construal (i.e., independent, interdependent, relational) were explored in this study. The proposed study had two specific aims: (1) determine whether emotion suppression and self-disclosure predict help-seeking attitudes and intentions, and (2) explore the role of culture, as measured by self-construal, on the above framework. A sample of 419 undergraduate college students were recruited from the Washington State University Psychology Human Subject Pool. Latent path modeling was conducted to test nine hypotheses. The results indicated that: (1) help-seeking attitudes mediated the relationship between emotion suppression or self-disclosure and help-seeking intentions; (2) self-construal predicted emotion suppression and self-disclosure; and (3) relational self-construal slightly moderated the relationship between self-disclosure and help-seeking attitudes. Implications for clinical practice and future research on emotion suppression and help-seeking are discussed.
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Details
- Title
- Emotion Suppression, Help-Seeking, and Culture
- Creators
- Eun Yu Jung
- Contributors
- Hsin-Ya Liao (Chair)Marlis Cornelia Kirchhoff (Committee Member)Paul S Strand (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Psychology
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 84
- Identifiers
- 99901220323001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis