Feeling how one wants to feel may be more important in the United States than in Japan.

Models of emotion regulation and well-being have suggested that the extent to which people feel how they want to feel (i.e., the size of the discrepancy between one's experienced and desired emotions) informs the motivation to regulate emotions and psychological health, with larger discrepancies predicting stronger motivation to regulate and poorer psychological health. Yet, if experiencing desired emotions is valued more in some cultures (e.g., United States) than in others (e.g., Japan), people in such cultures may be more motivated to regulate emotions and be less psychologically healthy when they do not feel as they want (i.e., when there are larger discrepancies between their experienced and desired emotions). In a preregistered ecological momentary assessments study (N = 221), we tracked motivated emotion regulation and psychological health in daily life in the United States and Japan. As predicted, larger discrepancies between experienced and desired emotions were associated with greater motivation for prohedonic emotion regulation and lower well-being among U.S. participants but not among Japanese participants. These cultural differences persisted when controlling for experienced and desired emotions. Thus, feeling how one wants to feel may be more important in the United States than in Japan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).