Your answer to this question might depend on the culture you grew up in. Everyone experiences suffering at some point in their lives; it’s inevitable. What varies is how people view this suffering.
Some see suffering as purely bad, and as a punishment to avoid at all costs. But does everyone see suffering in this negative light, or do some people have more positive ideas about it? Our team examined this.
Culture shapes people’s thinking styles. Research shows that East Asian people tend to believe in the coexistence of opposites (such as dark and light). They are more accepting of contradictory arguments (e.g., believing both “Vaccines are good” and “Vaccines are bad”) than people in Euro-American cultures. Also, East Asians are more likely to believe that things change over time, and that things can go from one extreme to the other and vice versa. Such cultural differences in thinking led us to expect different views on suffering between Chinese people (in China) and Euro-Canadians.
We asked people from these two groups what they associate with suffering and how they perceive the experience of suffering. Then, we looked at how these cultural differences in perceptions of suffering affect people’s view of real-life negative situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Participants wrote down as many words and phrases as possible that came to mind when thinking about suffering. When grouping the responses into categories, we found that the top five categories for Euro-Canadians were negative emotion, pain, illness, heartbreak, and psychological distress. The top five categories for Chinese participants included some negative categories (physical discomfort and hardship) but also included positivity, school, and relationships. School (such as exams, studying) and relationships (such as family, love, exes) could include both positive and negative associations, while the positivity category refers to positive thoughts solely and included courage, strength, and perseverance.
We then examined cultural differences in what people think suffering involves in experience. We asked people to imagine creating a suffering potion out of 37 “ingredients” which were positive (examples being health, strength, and hopefulness) or negative words (like illness, weakness, and hopelessness). As it turns out, Euro-Canadians used more negative ingredients than Chinese, who in turn used more positive ingredients. Indeed, 49% of Chinese participants (compared to 19% of Euro-Canadian participants) used at least one positive ingredient in making their potion of suffering.
Moving to Real Life
To tie off our studies on this topic, we looked at cultural differences in people’s views of negative real-life situations, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants listed potential outcomes and consequences that the COVID-19 pandemic might have on the world and people’s life. They then rated how positive and negative these outcomes were. Following the theme seen so far, Chinese participants perceived the pandemic as having less negative outcomes than Euro-Canadians. They listed more positive outcomes (in general, not just locally), such as better health research, increased community, improved relationships with household members, and a greater appreciation for health. Such findings echo an early study: Chinese participants were less pessimistic (and more optimistically biased) than Canadians in Toronto during the SARS outbreak in 2003. Chinese participants reported more inconvenience but also more positive changes brought by SARS.
It’s hard to imagine suffering being seen as a good thing, but these studies have successfully shown that there are differences in how people understand the suffering that is shaped by their worldview and culture.
What are your thoughts on hearing that some people see suffering more positively? It may inspire some people to try to cope with their suffering differently. Differences in how people interpret suffering influence how they cope with it, so perhaps considering how other cultures think of suffering can help people to learn new ways to cope with their own adversity. For example, being isolated during the pandemic can be tough, but perhaps this is an opportunity to read the books you have always wanted to read?
For Further Reading
Ji, L. J., Khei, M., Yap, S., Wang, X., Zhang, Z., & Hou, Y. (2021). Cultural differences in the construal of suffering and the COVID-19 pandemic. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(6), 1039–1047. doi:10.1177/1948550620958807
Ji, L. J., Zhang, Z., Usborne, E., & Guan, Y. (2004). Optimism across cultures: In response to the SARS outbreak. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 7(1), 25-34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-839X.2004.00132.x
Hannah Brozer is an undergraduate student of psychology at Queen’s University (Canada) and is interested in emotions and individual differences.
Li-Jun Ji is Professor of Psychology at Queen’s University (Canada) and studies culture and cognition.
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