The Influence of Culture on the Experience of Affects, Stress, Personality Traits, and Mental Health: Findings from Cross-Cultural Studies

Culture influence psychological phenomena in different ways. In this article, we introduce a framework for studying relationship between culture and psychological phenomena and we presented findings from some cross-cultural studies in this framework. It seems the definition and classification of personality traits, the experience of stress and mental health moderated by culture. The associations between positive and negative affects and mental health was different among Iranian and Swedish culture. In Iranian culture, both kind of affects was associated with mental health, whereas in Swedish culture, only positive affect was associated with mental health. Iranian students more used primary process against stress, whereas Swedish students more used secondary process. In addition, academic stress among Iranian students was less than Swedish students. It could conclude that there were some similarities and differences between Iranian and Swedish culture in personality traits, experience of anxiety, and coping with stress. Therefore, any policy making in global level and designing behavioral change strategies in national level should be influenced by these cultural similarities and differences