Cultural psychology
Chapter 10
Emotions

What is an emotion?

The controversy regarding the similarities and differences of people’s emotional experience around the worlds is based on the disagreement about how we can define emotions.

The James-Lange theory of emotions

James proposed that emotions are the physiological response or ‘bodily reverberations’ to stimuli in the worlds. These physiological responses are products of the autonomic nervous system.

The James-Lange theory maintains that our bodies respond to stimuli in the world by preparing us to react in a survival-facilitating way and our emotions are bodily changes that signal how we should behave.

The theory has been expanded in many ways. Emotions are no longer seen to be just the physiological experience but rather also include appraisals, nonverbal expressions, neural patterns, and subjective feelings.

The two-factor theory of emotions

Emotions are primarily interpretations of those bodily responses.

Suggestions for the origins of emotions

The James-Lange theory and the Two-Factor theory make different predictions regarding whether emotional experience is universal or culturally variable.

If the various extensions of the James-Lange theory are correct, this suggests an evolutionary origin to human emotions. If emotions are specific biological signals that alert people to events in their world, it would follow that this biological machinery must have been assembled through evolution. This suggests that people in all cultures should have the same emotional experiences.

If the Two-Factor theory of emotion is correct it suggests that in addition to a physiological basis, emotions are grounded in the belief systems that shape people’s interpretations. Because belief systems are influenced by culture, people might interpret their physiological signals in different ways across cultures.

Does emotional experience vary across cultures?

Emotions and facial expressions

Evidence for cultural universals in facial expressions

People in different cultures show a great deal of agreement about what feelings different facial poses are expressing.

Some facial expressions are universally similar around the world.

Ekman proposed that there is a set of basic emotions that are universally recognized around the world. These are: 1) Anger 2) Fear 3) Happiness 4) Sadness 5) Surprise, and 6) Disgust.

Evidence for cultural variability in facial expression

Emotional expressions are not just something that people learn growing up.

People are more accurate in judging the facial expressions of people from their own culture than those of another culture. There is a large universal component of recognizing facial expressions and a smaller culturally specific component. The link between certain facial expressions and inferred emotions appears to be a functional universal.

We are especially attentive to signs of fear as expressed in culturally familiar ways.

People are better at accurately perceiving the emotional expression of people they have been exposed to more and those who are of higher perceived status than themselves.

A way that cultures differ in how they interpret facial expression stems from the parts of the face to which they are attending. People often don’t express all of the feelings they are experiencing, and this tendency to modulate the feelings is shown on one’s face varies across cultures. Japanese people are more likely to conceal emotions they feel are potentially disruptive by presenting a more neural or pleasant face than Americans. Because it is more difficult to control muscles around the eyes, so there is more focus on the eyes to figure out whether someone may be disguising emotions. The mouth is a larger source of information than the eyes, so if you’re expecting that people’s feelings are being accurately broadcast by their faces, then you would fare best by attending to their mouths.

Cultural display rules

The capacity to produce and recognize particular facial expressions is identical across cultures, what varies are the display rules that cultures maintain for emotional expression. Display rules are culturally specific rules that govern which facial expressions are appropriate in a given situation and how intensely they should be exhibited.

In addition to governing the intensity with which emotions are expressed, display rules also shape the kinds of facial expressions that people might display. Ritualized displays are voluntarily produced emotional expressions.

Facial feedback hypothesis

Display rues presuppose that emotional experiences are unaffected by facial expressions. The theory maintains that the experience of the basic emotions is more or less constant across cultures, although cultures vary in how they choose to display those facial expressions.

The facial feedback hypothesis proposes that one source of information we utilize when inferring our feelings is our facial expressions. The correlation between our facial expressions and feelings might be relied on in interpreting our feelings. If your culture encourages you to express your emotions clearly on your face, you may infer that you’re feeling strong emotions.

Cultural variation in intensity of emotional experience

The cultural display rules governing the deamplifying and masking of emotions in East Asia might be leading East Asians to experience fewer and less intense emotions than Americans.

In some cultural contexts, the expression of intense emotions may make it problematic to fit in well with others.

Cultural displays alter the ways that people express their emotions, which can potentially alter their emotional experiences. Expressions of emotions are linked to the experience of emotions.

Emotions and language

Many languages don’t have labels that correspond to some of the basic emotions. There is disagreement across cultures as to what the basic emotions are.

There is variation in how different cultures describe their emotional experiences. People categorize their emotions in different ways in different cultures. There are many words in languages that don’t have an equivalent in other languages.

The cultural diversity in emotion terms might arise from the different clusters of meanings that are frequently encountered in different cultures.

Cultural variation in kinds of emotional experiences

People with independent and interdependent selves interpret situations differently, looking at situations as providing opportunities to distinguish themselves from others or to affect their relationships with others.

The emotional experiences of those who are more interdepend are more interpersonally engaged than the emotional experiences among more independent individuals.

Cultural concerns are associated with the kinds of emotions relevant to those concerns.

For Japanese, emotions are experienced more as interpersonal states that connect people to each other, whereas for Americans, emotions are experienced more as personal states that lie within individuals.

Cultural variation in subjective well-being and happiness

The idea that happiness is a matter of good luck is evident in most cultures in the world. People who live in cultures where happiness is defined as good luck report feeling less happy than those where luck is not seen as an important part of the definition.  

Subjective well-being is the feeling of how satisfied one is with one’s life. There are pronounced cultural differences in subjective well-being. Within and across counties.

People who live in countries in which they have access to enough wealth to easily meet the basic needs of life tend to be more satisfied than those who don’t. But the relationship between money and happiness is not universally strong. It is most closely connected at very low levels of wealth.

Another factor that predicts the subjective well-being of nations is human rights. Those countries that promote human rights the most tend to have the happiest citizens. The overall equality among people in a country is also associated with greater subjective well-being.

There’re some factors that predict life satisfaction differently across cultures: 1) Doing what a person would like or what (s)he should do. Living up to cultural norms seems to be viewed as the basis of a good life in collectivistic cultures. 2) Which theory people embrace regarding how happy they should feel. When people estimate who happy they were considering a longer period of time, these estimates are more likely to reflect the theories they hold about what life should be like.

Asians are less interested in positive feelings compared with Westerners. This might be because there may be fewer benefits for them of having especially positive feelings. Experiencing negative emotions doesn’t appear to have the same consequences across cultures.

The kinds of positive emotions people desire seem to vary across cultures. Ideal affect is the kinds of feelings that people desire. These are the kinds of emotions that people are trying to achieve, so they structure their lives in order to increase the likelihood that they will experience these emotions.