Emotions and behaviour: Data from a cross‐cultural recognition study

Abstract

Contemporary functionalist accounts of emotions view these phenomena as adaptations to historically recurrent classes of adaptive challenge. Such a view necessarily presumes certain commonalities in the relations between emotion and behaviour. Despite this outlook, however, the relations between emotion and behaviour have rarely been the focus of study. In the current investigation, 123 males and 213 females from four continents read text descriptions of “emotional” behaviour. As predicted, anger, fear, sadness, and happiness were more readily identified than more cognitively complex emotions (embarrassment, shame, guilt, and pride) and there were no cross‐cultural differences in recognition rates for the eight emotions studied. Contrary to expectations however, behaviours derived from felt “urges” were no more readily recognised than actual behaviours. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for emotion theory. Limitations and directions for future research are given.