Emotions and culture

Charles Darwin was among the first to study emotion and culture in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, suggesting emotions and their expression are universal and evolutionary. Darwin considered the face to be the primary medium of emotional expression in humans, capable of representing both major emotions and subtle variations within each one. In the early 1960s, Silvan Tomkins' Affect Theory built upon Darwin's research, arguing that facial expressions are biological and universal manifestations of emotions. In 1971, psychologists Paul Ekman and Carroll Izard explored the universality of emotions, creating sets of photographs displaying emotions that were recognizable to Americans. These photographs were recognized as expressing the same feelings by cultures in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. From this, the researchers concluded that facial expressions were universal, innate, and based in evolution. In addition to pioneering research in psychology, ethnographic accounts of cultural differences in emotion began to emerge. Gregory Bateson, an English anthropologist, used photography and film to document his time with the people of Bajoeng Gede in Bali. He observed cultural differences in Balinese mothers' muted emotional responses to their children's intense emotions, and mother-child displays of love and anger did not follow Western social norms. The fieldwork of anthropologist Jean Briggs details her almost two-year experience living with an Utku Inuit family in her book Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. She described the culture as particularly unique in emotional control – expressions of anger or aggression were rarely observed, and resulted in ostracism. The term emotive, coined by anthropologist William Reddy, attempts to distinguish societal emotional values and expressions from individual's emotional experience. In The Making of Romantic Love, Reddy argues that romantic love is a 12th-century European construct, built in response to the parochial view that sexual desire was immoral, and was not present in cultures outside of Europe at the time. These cultures did not view sexual desire as a form of appetite, unlike the view popularized by the Christian Church. Sexuality was not spiritually distinct from love: indeed, sex was often used as a medium of spiritual worship, emulating the divine love between Krishna and Radha. Sexual desire and love were inextricable from one another. ==Cultural norms of emotions==

Culture guides our understanding, expectations, and interpretations of human emotion and behavior. Cultural expectations of emotion are sometimes referred to as display rules, internalized through a socialization process. The social consequences and valuation of different emotions also vary across cultures. Ekman and Friesen suggest that display rules vary across cultures, genders, or backgrounds, shaping emotional expression accordingly. A cultural syndrome, as defined by Triandis, is a "shared set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, values, and behavior organized around a central theme and found among speakers of one language, in one time period, and in one geographic region". Because culture is a shared experience, there are social implications for emotional expression and experiences that vary between situations and individuals. Hochschild discusses the role of feeling rules, which are social norms that prescribe how people should feel in different situations. These rules can be general (how people should express emotions overall) and also situational (how people should express emotions during specific events). Cultural scripts are cultural norms that influence our expectations for emotional regulation and experience. They shape the perceived value and desirability of different emotions, influencing ideal affect (what people want to feel). The dominant cultural script in Western cultures is to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative emotions. In Eastern cultures, the dominant cultural script is based in dialectical thinking and seeks to find a balance between positive and negative emotions. In individualistic cultures, happiness is viewed as infinite, personally attainable, and experienced internally. suggest that Japanese contexts reflect a conjoint model of agency, meaning that emotions are formed within a relational context. In American contexts, emotions are experienced individually and through self-reflection, reflecting a disjoint model. When Americans are asked about emotions, they are more likely to have self-focused responses, whereas a typical Japanese reaction would reflect emotions between the self and others. ==Culture and emotion regulation==

Emotions play a critical role in interpersonal relationships and how people relate to each other. Emotional exchanges can have serious social consequences that can result in either maintaining and enhancing positive relationships or becoming a source of antagonism and discord (Fredrickson, 1998; Gottman & Levenson, 1992). Even though people may generally "want to feel better than worse" (Larsen, 2000), how these emotions are regulated may differ across cultures. Research by Yuri Miyamoto suggests that cultural differences influence emotion regulation strategies. Research also indicates that different cultures socialize their children to regulate their emotions according to their own cultural norms. For example, ethnographic accounts suggest that American mothers think that it is important to focus on their children's successes while Chinese mothers think it is more important to provide discipline for their children. To further support this theory, a laboratory experiment found that when children succeeded on a test, American mothers were more likely than Chinese mothers to provide positive feedback (e.g. "You're so smart!"), in comparison to Chinese mothers who provided more neutral or task relevant feedback (e.g. "Did you understand the questions or did you just guess?"; Ng, Pomerantz, & Lam, 2007). This shows how American mothers are more likely to "up-regulate" positive emotions by focusing on their children's success whereas Chinese mothers are more likely to "down-regulate" children's positive emotions by not focusing on their success. Americans see emotions as internal personal reactions; emotions are about the self (Markus & Kityama, 1991). In America, emotional expression is encouraged by parents and peers while suppression is often disapproved. Keeping emotions inside is viewed as being insincere as well as posing a risk to one's health and well-being. In Japanese culture, however, emotions reflect relationships in addition to internal states. Some research even suggests that emotions that reflect the inner self cannot be separated from emotions that reflect the larger group. Therefore, unlike American culture, expression of emotions is often discouraged, and suppressing one's individual emotions to better fit in with the emotions of the group is looked at as mature and appropriate. Emotional perception and recognition While traditionally emotional perception and recognition was thought of as identical processes across groups that relies on interpretation of standard sets of facial expressions, more recent research suggests the cultural context of upbringing can affect emotional perception and recognition of people in significant ways. Cultural context serves as important frameworks for the perceiver to allocate attention when attempting to attribute emotions. A cultural effect on the perception of facial expression is observed across different groups, emotions such as startled and sneers in a Western Caucasian context are expressed generally across the face are instead interpreted as surprise and anger by Asian participants due to a stronger focus on eyes when assessing emotional expression. Identical sets of facial expressions have also been seen to reflect distinct emotions in different cultural groups. Furthermore, certain cultural groups seem to disregard facial expressions in emotional perception in favor of inferences based on actions. A difference in the neuronal correlate of emotional perception is also seen, distinct brain activities have been observed in participants of different cultural groups when asked to perceive the emotions of ingroup and outgroup members and certain facial expressions associated with emotions. On the level of social context, while surveyed and accounted for by individuals across cultures, a more pronounced emphasis its utilization in emotional perception is observed in individuals that belong to a collectivist cultural group. ==Individualistic vs. collectivistic cultures==

Contemporary literature has traced the influence of culture on a variety of aspects of emotion, from emotional values to emotion regulation. Indeed, culture may be best understood as a channel through which emotions are molded and subsequently expressed. Indeed, this had been most extensively discussed in psychology by examining individualistic and collectivistic cultures. The individualistic vs. collectivistic cultural paradigm has been widely used in the study of emotion psychology. Collectivistic cultures are said to promote the interdependence of individuals and the notion of social harmony. Indeed, Niedenthal suggests that "the needs, wishes, and desires of the collectives in which individuals find themselves are emphasized, and the notion of individuality is minimized or even absent from the cultural model". Thus, in collectivistic cultures, emotions are believed to occur between people, rather than within an individual. Individualistic cultures, however, conceive emotions as independent internal experiences, occurring within an individual. When American school students were asked about their emotions, they usually stated that they experienced emotions within themselves. While, Individualistic cultures have been observed to commonly express positive emotions in a highly aroused way. Russians, however, are encouraged to view negative emotions as functions with benefits into one's functioning in life. Utilisation of storybooks that were most popular in their respective cultures revealed that storybooks in Taiwanese cultures included content with calm happiness inducing content, while in American cultures storybooks included content with exciting happiness inducing content. However, in Chinese culture low arousal positive states are preferable to high arousal positive states. The researchers provide a framework to explain this, suggesting that high arousal positive states are needed in order to influence someone else, where low arousal positive states are useful for adjusting to someone else. The study revealed that individuals from individualistic culture have reported more similar emotional experience and preferences within individuals of their culture. This was explained to be due to the emphasis of authenticity in the individualistic culture. Since emotions are strongly viewed to be representation of their authentic self, there lies more pressure to follow the norms of the society when it comes to emotional expression. The study conducted showed that Japanese individuals have a relatively low expression of emotion. Niedenthal further suggests that: "Emotional moderation in general might be expected to be observed in collectivist cultures more than in individualistic cultures, since strong emotions and emotional expression could disrupt intra-group relations and smooth social functioning". Research by Butler et al., found that the social impact of emotion suppression is moderated by the specific culture. Whilst the suppression of emotion by those with European Americans values led to non-responsive reactions and hostility, individuals with bicultural Asian-American values were perceived as less hostile and more engaged when they suppressed their emotions. Thus, individuals with Asian-American values were more skilled in emotional suppression than individuals with European-American values. The article explanation is that Asian-Americans may engage in habitual suppression more often as negative emotions are seen to cause social disharmony and thus contradict cultural values. Research by Friedlmeier et al., suggests children must be socialized in order to meet the emotional values and standards of their culture. Taiwanese values promote ideal affect as a calm happiness, where American ideal affect is excited happiness. However, in Chinese culture low arousal positive states are preferable to high arousal positive states. The researchers provide a framework to explain this, suggesting that high arousal positive states are needed in order to influence someone else, where low arousal positive states are useful for adjusting to someone else. By incorporating how emotional practices in global South have sought to reconcile human-nature relations, Badri shows that affective-relations play a critical role in dealing with the Anthropocene condition of today. A series of experiments were designed to determine whether southerners got angrier than northerners when they were insulted. In one example, a participant was bumped into and insulted, and their subsequent facial expressions were coded. Southerners showed significantly more anger expressions. Furthermore, researchers measured cortisol levels, which increase with stress and arousal, and testosterone levels, which increase when primed for aggression. In insulted southerners, cortisol and testosterone levels rose by 79% and 12% respectively, which was far more than in insulted northerners. With their research, Nisbett & Cohen show that southern anger is expressed in a culturally specific manner. ==Challenges in cultural research of emotions==

A significant challenge in cross-cultural research of human emotion is encountered in sampling. The expression of emotions varies within a culture based on variables like gender, sex and marital status. It is important to consider this variation when comparing populations from different cultures, and to ensure they are relatively homogeneous across variables other than the cultural construct of interest (eg. individualism vs. collectivism). While doing this is relatively straightforward with some variables, such as age, it can be challenging to do with others, like social class and education. If comparable samples are drawn cross-culturally, this may limit the diversity of those samples, leaving doubts about the generalizability of the findings to the broader population within those cultures Another challenge outlined by Matsumoto (1990) is that culture is ever changing and dynamic. Culture is not static. As the cultures continue to evolve it is necessary that research capture these changes. Identifying a culture as "collectivistic" or "individualistic" can provide a stable as well as inaccurate picture of what is really taking place. No one culture is purely collectivistic or individualistic and labeling a culture with these terms does not help account for the cultural differences that exist in emotions. As Matsumoto argues, a more contemporary view of cultural relations reveals that culture is more complex than previously thought. Translation is also a key issue in studies involving cultures that speak different languages., in English has a very positive and exuberant connotation. In Hindi, Sukhi is a similar term, however it refers to more of a content state that is associated with peacefulness. Although both refer to a general positive state, the unique connotations may lead to different interpretations of the terms, which are meant to refer to the same construct. When using translated materials in a new cultural context, it must also be considered if the situations are transferrable to the new context. For instance, a situation that may have evoked anger in individuals from Western cultures may evoke feelings of shame in individuals from Eastern cultures, and researchers may inadvertently end up comparing different emotions Recently, the valence and arousal of the twelve most popular emotion keywords expressed on the micro-blogging site Twitter were measured using latent semantic clustering in three geographical regions: Europe, Asia and North America. It was demonstrated that the valence and arousal levels of the same emotion keywords differ significantly with respect to these geographical regions — Europeans are, or at least present themselves as more positive and aroused, North Americans are more negative and Asians appear to be more positive but less aroused when compared to global valence and arousal levels of the same emotion keywords. This shows that emotional differences between Western and Eastern cultures can, to some extent, be inferred through their language style. Conclusion Culture affects every aspect of emotions. Identifying which emotions are good or bad, when emotions are appropriate to be expressed, and even how they should be displayed are all influenced by culture. Even more importantly, cultures differently affect emotions, meaning that exploring cultural contexts is key to understanding emotions. Through incorporating sociological, anthropological, and psychological research accounts it can be concluded that exploring emotions in different cultures is very complex and the current literature is equally as complex, reflecting multiple views and the hypothesis. ==See also==