Cultural Differences In Emotion Research Articles

A cultural comparison of children’s emotion knowledge: Data from two cultures

Knowing about emotions is vital for children’s school adjustment, well-being, and future social relationships. Whereas experiencing emotions is a universal psychological process at the biological level, how emotions are categorized and communicated is shaped by culture. Most studies have investigated cultural differences in emotion (knowledge) in Western and Eastern cultures. To compare emotion knowledge within Western countries, N = 585 children from Germany and N = 100 children from Israel in the two age groups preschool (42–71 months) and primary school (72–89 months) were interviewed with the Adaptive Test of Emotion Knowledge for Three- to Nine-Year-Olds (ATEM 3-9). Generalized linear models (GLMs) indicate that children from Israel showed higher levels of emotion knowledge in the total score and in all seven components of emotion knowledge than their agemates from Germany. These results highlight the importance of differences in family structure and values within Western countries. It is important to determine the various factors and the socialization in the family and in educational institutions that influence emotion knowledge in Germany and Israel.

Infants are sensitive to cultural differences in emotions at 11 months.

A myriad of emotion perception studies has shown infants’ ability to discriminate different emotional categories, yet there has been little investigation of infants’ perception of cultural differences in emotions. Hence little is known about the extent to which culture-specific emotion information is recognised in the beginning of life. Caucasian Australian infants of 10–12 months participated in a visual-paired comparison task where their preferential looking patterns to three types of infant-directed emotions (anger, happiness, surprise) from two different cultures (Australian, Japanese) were examined. Differences in racial appearances were controlled. Infants exhibited preferential looking to Japanese over Caucasian Australian mothers’ angry and surprised expressions, whereas no difference was observed in trials involving East-Asian Australian mothers. In addition, infants preferred Caucasian Australian mothers’ happy expressions. These findings suggest that 11-month-olds are sensitive to cultural differences in spontaneous infant-directed emotional expressions when they are combined with a difference in racial appearance.

Robots for Future Classrooms: A Cross-Cultural Validation Study of “Negative Attitudes Toward Robots Scale” in the U.S. Context

Social robots are increasingly used in educational settings, but research on human–robot interaction in schools has largely focused on robotic functions and effects. Teacher attitudes towards robots are an important factor in determining the effectiveness of robot-related classroom interventions. In this paper we assessed the usefulness of the Negative Attitudes Toward Robots Scale (NARS) for use in U.S. populations. We reviewed research on the use of NARS and on teacher attitudes toward social robots, showing the potential of this scale for use in the field of education. Using data from 54 undergraduate students in a pre-service teacher education course, we found slightly different subscale loadings on the NARS than previous studies. We identified items on the scale that needed clarification and noted that the paucity of items related to emotional responses may limit the effectiveness of the scale as an international tool for assessing attitudes given cultural differences in emotion. We also found that lack of prior experience with robots was the strongest predictor of negative attitudes towards robots, suggesting that increased exposure to social robots in teacher education might be an effective way to improve educator attitudes toward robots.

72 EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS OF SEX DIFFERENCES IN BRAIN GENE EXPRESSION IN SUICIDES

The Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality has been repeatedly found to predict life satisfaction (LS), but cultural variations have been noted in the effects of each FFM dimension. In this research, we compared the prediction of LS with Extraversion and Neuroticism via the pathways of individual depressive state and interdependent happiness between American (n = 155) and Chinese community adults (n = 248). In both samples, Extraversion and interdependent happiness positively predicted LS, whereas Neuroticism and depressive state negatively predicted LS. Using structural equation modeling, we found that interdependent happiness mediated the effects of Extraversion and Neuroticism on LS in both samples, and there was no significant cultural difference in the indirect effect of interdependent happiness. Depressive state mediated the effect of Neuroticism on LS in American adults, but it did not explain the effects of Extraversion and Neuroticism on LS for the Hong Kong Chinese adults. We interpret the different effect of depressive state by referring to the literature on cultural differences in emotion. These findings support the notion that the specific effect of each FFM dimension on LS should be examined with reference to the cultural context.

The emotion–valuation constellation: Multiple emotions are governed by a common grammar of social valuation

Abstract Social emotions are hypothesized to be adaptations designed by selection to solve adaptive problems pertaining to social valuation—the disposition to attend to, associate with, and aid a target individual based on her probable contributions to the fitness of the valuer. To steer between effectiveness and economy, social emotions need to activate in precise proportion to the local evaluations of the various acts and characteristics that dictate the social value of self and others. Supporting this hypothesis, experiments conducted in the United States and India indicate that five different social emotions all track a common set of valuations. The extent to which people value each of 25 positive characteristics in others predicts the intensities of: pride (if you had those characteristics), anger (if someone failed to acknowledge that you have those characteristics), gratitude (if someone convinced others that you have those characteristics), guilt (if you harmed someone who has those characteristics), and sadness (if someone died who had those characteristics). The five emotions track local valuations (mean r = +.72) and even foreign valuations (mean r = +.70). In addition, cultural differences in emotion are patterned: They follow cultural differences in valuation. These findings suggest that multiple social emotions are governed (in part) by a common architecture of social valuation, that the valuation architecture operates with a substantial degree of universality in its content, and that a unified theoretical framework may explain cross-cultural invariances and cultural differences in emotion.

Should job applicants be excited or calm? The role of culture and ideal affect in employment settings.

Do cultural differences in emotion play a role in employment settings? We predicted that cultural differences in ideal affect-the states that people value and ideally want to feel-are reflected in: (a) how individuals present themselves when applying for a job, and (b) what individuals look for when hiring someone for a job. In Studies 1-2 (NS1 = 236, NS2 = 174), European Americans wanted to convey high arousal positive states (HAP; excitement) more and low arousal positive states (LAP; calm) less than did Hong Kong Chinese when applying for a job. European Americans also used more HAP words in their applications and showed more "high intensity" smiles in their video introductions than did Hong Kong Chinese. In Study 3 (N = 185), European American working adults rated their ideal job applicant as being more HAP and less LAP than did Hong Kong Chinese, and in Study 4a (N = 125), European American Masters of Business Administration (MBAs) were more likely to hire an excited (vs. calm) applicant for a hypothetical internship than were Hong Kong Chinese MBAs. Finally, in Study 4b (N = 300), employees in a U.S. company were more likely to hire an excited (vs. calm) applicant for a hypothetical internship. In Studies 1-4a, observed differences were partly related to European Americans valuing HAP more than Hong Kong Chinese. These findings support our predictions that culture and ideal affect shape behavior in employment settings, and have important implications for promoting cultural diversity in the workplace. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Elaborating on the effect of culture on the relations of extraversion and neuroticism to life satisfaction

The Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality has been repeatedly found to predict life satisfaction (LS), but cultural variations have been noted in the effects of each FFM dimension. In this research, we compared the prediction of LS with Extraversion and Neuroticism via the pathways of individual depressive state and interdependent happiness between American (n = 155) and Chinese community adults (n = 248). In both samples, Extraversion and interdependent happiness positively predicted LS, whereas Neuroticism and depressive state negatively predicted LS. Using structural equation modeling, we found that interdependent happiness mediated the effects of Extraversion and Neuroticism on LS in both samples, and there was no significant cultural difference in the indirect effect of interdependent happiness. Depressive state mediated the effect of Neuroticism on LS in American adults, but it did not explain the effects of Extraversion and Neuroticism on LS for the Hong Kong Chinese adults. We interpret the different effect of depressive state by referring to the literature on cultural differences in emotion. These findings support the notion that the specific effect of each FFM dimension on LS should be examined with reference to the cultural context.

Beyond essentialism: Cultural differences in emotions revisited.

The current research offers an alternative to essentialism for studying cultural variation in emotional experience. Rather than assuming that individuals always experience an emotion in the same way, our starting point was that the experience of an emotion like anger or shame may vary from one instance to another. We expected to find different anger and shame experience types, that is, groups of people who differ in the instances of anger and shame that they experience. We proposed that studying cultural differences in emotional experience means studying differences in the distribution of these types across cultural contexts: There should be systematic differences in the types that are most common in each culture. Students from the United States, Japan, and Belgium (N = 928) indicated their emotional experiences in terms of appraisals and action tendencies in response to 15 hypothetical anger or shame situations. Using an inductive clustering approach, we identified anger and shame types who were characterized by different patterns of anger and shame experience. As expected, we found that the distribution of these types differed across the three cultural contexts: Of the two anger types, one was common in Japan and one in the United States and Belgium; the three shame types were each most prevalent in a different cultural context. Participants' anger and shame types were primarily predicted by their culture of origin (with an accuracy of 72.3% for anger and 74.0% for shame) and not, or much less, by their ethnic origin, socioeconomic status, gender, self-construal, or personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Cultural fit of emotions and health implications: A psychosocial resources model

AbstractEmerging evidence on cultural differences in health implications of emotions suggests that the cultural fit of emotions (i.e., accordance with culturally normative and prevalent patterns of emotions) is associated with better health. However, the mechanisms underlying the links between culture, emotions, and health are not clear. In this paper, we propose a psychosocial resources model of cultural fit as an integrative framework to guide the future work in this area. Following the review of cultural differences in emotions, we next review the accumulating evidence showing that culture modulates the link between emotions and health in such a way that the cultural fit of emotions positively predicts health. We then propose that psychosocial resources (e.g., resilience, meaning in life, and social support) play an important role in linking the cultural fit of emotions to health. The psychosocial resources model proposes that the emotion–health link is modulated and sustained via the relevance of emotions to resources and coping in a given cultural context. The model is supported by a line of research suggesting the role of cultural fit in the attainment of resources and another line of research showing the importance of psychosocial resources in health. Lastly, future directions will be discussed for research incorporating culture into the study of emotion and health.

A New Standardized Emotional Film Database for Asian Culture.

Researchers interested in emotions have endeavored to elicit emotional responses in the laboratory and have determined that films were one of the most effective ways to elicit emotions. The present study presented the development of a new standardized emotional film database for Asian culture. There were eight kinds of emotion: fear, disgust, anger, sadness, neutrality, surprise, amusement, and pleasure. Each kind included eight film clips, and a total of 64 emotional films were viewed by 110 participants. We analyzed both the subjective experience (valence, arousal, motivation, and dominance) and physiological response (heart rate and respiration rate) to the presentation of each film. The results of the subjective ratings indicated that our set of 64 films successfully elicited the target emotions. Heart rate declined while watching high-arousal films compared to neutral ones. Films that expressed amusement elicited the lowest respiration rate, whereas fear elicited the highest. The amount and category of emotional films in this database were considerable. This database may help researchers choose applicable emotional films for study according to their own purposes and help in studies of cultural differences in emotion.

Cultural differences in perceiving and processing emotions: a holistic approach to person perception

East Asians tend towards holistic styles of thinking whereas Westerners generally think more analytically. Recent work has shown that Western participants perceive emotional expressions in a somewhat holistic manner, however. Specifically, Westerners interpret emotional facial expressions differently when presented with a body displaying a congruent versus incongruent emotional expression. Here, we examined how processing these face-body combinations varies according to cultural differences in thinking style. Consistent with their proclivity towards contextual focus, Japanese perceivers focused more on the body when judging the emotions of face-body composites. Moreover, in line with their greater tendency towards holistic perceptual processing, we found that pairing facial expressions of emotion with emotionally congruent bodies facilitated Japanese participants’ recognition of faces’ emotions to a greater degree than it did for Canadians. Similarly, incongruent face-body combinations impaired facial emotion recognition more for Japanese than Canadian participants. These findings extend work on cultural differences in emotion recognition from interpersonal to intrapersonal contexts with implications for intercultural understanding.

Doing emotions: The role of culture in everyday emotions

ABSTRACTEmotional experience is culturally constructed. In this review, we discuss evidence that cultural differences in emotions are purposeful, helping an individual to meet the mandate of being a good person in their culture. We also discuss research showing that individual’s fit to the cultural emotion norm is associated with well-being, and suggest that this link may be explained by the fact that normative emotions meet the cultural mandate. Finally, we discuss research that sheds light on some of the collective processes of emotion construction: social interactions and emotion representations are geared towards promoting emotions that are conducive to the cultural mandate. In conclusion, we suggest that individuals become part of their culture by “doing emotions” in a way that is consistent with the cultural mandate, and that in intercultural interactions, emotions can be literally “at cross purposes”: each person’s emotions are constructed to fit the purposes of their own culture.

Proud Americans and lucky Japanese: Cultural differences in appraisal and corresponding emotion.

Appraisal theories of emotion propose that the emotions people experience correspond to their appraisals of their situation. In other words, individual differences in emotional experiences reflect differing interpretations of the situation. We hypothesized that in similar situations, people in individualist and collectivist cultures experience different emotions because of culturally divergent causal attributions for success and failure (i.e., agency appraisals). In a test of this hypothesis, American and Japanese participants recalled a personal experience (Study 1) or imagined themselves to be in a situation (Study 2) in which they succeeded or failed, and then reported their agency appraisals and emotions. Supporting our hypothesis, cultural differences in emotions corresponded to differences in attributions. For example, in success situations, Americans reported stronger self-agency emotions (e.g., proud) than did Japanese, whereas Japanese reported a stronger situation-agency emotion (lucky). Also, cultural differences in attribution and emotion were largely explained by differences in self-enhancing motivation. When Japanese and Americans were induced to make the same attribution (Study 2), cultural differences in emotions became either nonsignificant or were markedly reduced.

Emotion display rules at work in the global service economy: the special case of the customer

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to illustrate how emotion display rules are influenced by relational, occupational, and cultural expectations.Design/methodology/approachThe authors compare these influences by assessing anger and happiness display rules toward customers, coworkers, and supervisors across four cultures.FindingsOverall, the findings suggest that anger can be expressed with coworkers, can be slightly leaked to supervisors, but must be almost completely suppressed with customers. In contrast, happiness expression is most acceptable with coworkers. Moreover, though culture dimensions (i.e. power distance and collectivism) do predict display rules with organizational members, display rules with customers are fairly consistent across culture, with two exceptions. French respondents are more accepting of anger expression with customers, while American respondents report the highest expectations for expressing happiness to customers.Practical implicationsThe results support that several countries share the “service with a smile” expectations for customers, but these beliefs are more strongly held in the USA than in other cultures. Thus, importing practices from the USA to other culturally distinct countries may be met with resistance. Management must be aware of cultural differences in emotions and emotion norms, as outlined here, to improve the experience of employees of globalized service organizations.Originality/valueThe authors integrate social, occupational, and cultural theoretical perspectives of emotional display rules, and build on the small but growing research identifying variation in display rules by work target, specifically speaking to the globalized “service culture.”

Cross-cultural differences in emotions: the why and how

With their research on emotions in everyday life, Scherer et al. (2004) have sparked a lively discussion which has brought a number of important issues and perspectives in this area to the fore. Collectively, the discourse traverses the emotions literature, highlighting how ‘‘extraordinarily fluid and changeable’’ the emotion process is, and how equally extraordinary the challenge of describing and studying it is while still honoring its complexity and dynamism (Scherer, 2004: 669, referencing Wilhelm et al., 2004). It is our hope to add another dimension to this discourse by considering two key issues we believe deserve further discussion, namely (a) the value of studying cultural differences in emotion and (b) the potential contributions and insights that Scherer et al.’s (2004) methodology may offer to the literature on cross-cultural differences in emotion.

Cultural differences in emotions: a context for interpreting emotional experiences

In this article, it is suggested that cross-cultural assessment of emotional disturbances would benefit from the consideration of cultural differences in the modal, and normative emotions. A summary of the research literature on cultural differences in emotions, in particular in antecedent events, subjective feeling, appraisal, and behavior is provided. Cultural differences in emotions are understood functionally, such that the most prevalent emotional phenomena in a culture are those that fit and reinforce the distinct cultural models (i.e. goals and practices) of self and relationship. It is argued that a culture-sensitive approach to emotional disturbances would entail the assessment of emotional phenomena that are dysfunctional to the cultural models of self and relationship.

Morphed images of basic emotional expressions: ratings on Russell's bipolar field.

An object may be gradually changed into another object by a technique called "morphing" as in the current study. Although in some studies, such as by Coren and Russell, subjects were asked to rate psychologically synthesized facial images seen in a stereoscope, there do not seem to be any studies in which facial images were physically synthesized as morphed images. Our question then was how subjects would rate them. Multidimensional scaling indicated that ratings of facial images, physically synthesized by morphing, showed essentially the same configuration as those of psychologically synthesized faces and that our results conformed to the well-known dimensions of emotional space. In contrast, ratings of fear might not conform to the dimensional emotional space, suggesting cultural differences in emotion between Japan and the United States.

Cultural Differences and Cross-Cultural Similarities in Appraisals and Emotional Responses

To conduct a cross-cultural test of a theory specifying the appraisals that elicit particular emotions, undergraduates from India and the United States were asked how they appraised events that caused them to feel sadness, fear, or anger. In both cultures there was evidence that an appraisal of powerlessness characterized incidents leading to sadness and fear, rather than anger; and an appraisal that other persons caused negative events characterized incidents leading to anger, rather than sadness or fear. Also, Indians appraised events as less discrepant from what they had wanted than Americans did; this accounted for lower sadness and anger among Indians. Overall, cultural differences in appraisal explained cultural differences in emotion, due to underlying cross-cultural similarities in appraisal-emotion relationships.

Cultural variations in emotions: a review.

The psychological and anthropological literature on cultural variations in emotions is reviewed. The literature has been interpreted within the framework of a cognitive-process model of emotions. Both cross-cultural differences and similarities were identified in each phase of the emotion process; similarities in 1 phase do not necessarily imply similarities in other phases. Whether cross-cultural differences or similarities are found depends to an important degree on the level of description of the emotional phenomena. Cultural differences in emotions appear to be due to differences in event types or schemas, in culture-specific appraisal propensities, in behavior repertoires, or in regulation processes. Differences in taxonomies of emotion words sometimes reflect true emotion differences like those just mentioned, but they may also just result from differences in which emotion-process phase serves as the basis for categorization.

Cultural variations in emotions: A review.

The psychological and anthropological literature on cultural variations in emotions is reviewed. The literature has been interpreted within the framework of a cognitive-process model of emotions. Both cross-cultural differences and similarities were identified in each phase of the emotion process; similarities in 1 phase do not necessarily imply similarities in other phases. Whether cross-cultural differences or similarities are found depends to an important degree on the level of description of the emotional phenomena. Cultural differences in emotions appear to be due to differences in event types or schemas, in culture-specific appraisal propensities, in behavior repertoires, or in regulation processes. Differences in taxonomies of emotion words sometimes reflect true emotion differences like those just mentioned, but they may also just result from differences in which emotion-process phase serves as the basis for categorization.