Culture+and+Emotion


 * Culture Notes from Class**

Culture and Emotion
 * Systems of meaning
 * Through social participation
 * Give shape to psychological processes

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
 * Require language to think
 * Therefore have only those experiences, thoughts and perceptions for which we have words
 * Little evidence for the strong version
 * Weaker version - culture helps define how we make sense of the world

English language - 2000 emotion words Taiwanese - 750

Amae
 * Japanese - pleasurable dependence on another person
 * Link between child and parent
 * Expected unconditional nurturance in close relationships

Hyper- Vs. Hypo-cognized Emotions
 * Hyper-cognize - create an elaborate network of associations (distinctions that lead to an increase in the vocabulary for some emotion)
 * Hypo-cognize - to fail to give an emotion much cognition elaboration or detail

Cultural Differences in Emotion Processes
 * Emotional Appraisals
 * Fairness and Morality
 * Help yourself - American vs. Japanese interpretation
 * Cultural differences in expressing emotions
 * Display rules - Japanese students masked disgust when an experimenter was present, US express more negative emotions than others, Japan and Russia soften with a slight smile
 * Difficult for bicultural individuals
 * Emotional labor - employees have to display a certain emotion (flight attendants/waitresses etc.)
 * Better at identifying emotions of own culture - different dialects of facial expression

Hofstede Cultural Characteristics Individualism vs. Collectivism Power distance
 * Americans - describe how they felt
 * Asians - describe how people around them felt
 * Collectivism may inhibit expression of negative emotions to promote group harmony
 * Vertical emphasizes and reinforces status differences
 * Horizontal minimizes attention to status differences
 * Japan anger of coach to player, but offensive for player to show anger to coach
 * Emotional display or emotional experience??

Methodological Issues
 * Research from prosperous countries
 * Cultures do not necessarily follow national boundaries
 * Culture may influence self-report
 * Comparing people from two countries is not the same as comparing cultures

Ekman Neuro-Cultural Theory
 * Events in environment may elicit particular memories and interpretations

Russell Emotion episodes as socially constructed scrips
 * Emotions evolved responses to the environment which are innate and universal
 * Cultures tinker with individual components of scripts
 * Perceived cause more open to cultural interpretation

Keltner and Haiat Levels of Analysis
 * Emotions have multiple functions
 * Evolutionary - aid survival and reproductive fitness
 * Socially constructed and interpretation
 * Culture encourages emotions that support the overall social structure and discourage emotional experiences that interfere with social structure


 * Chapter 3: Culture and Emotion**


 * **Social construction of emotion** – process by which cultures develop and communicate about emotional concepts
 * The appraisal profiles and facial expressions associated with certain emotions are highly similar across cultures, suggesting that they may be influenced by human nature
 * The way we interpret actual events depends on the norms of our culture and on our personal experiences
 * Culture also sets standards for the emotions we should display in different situations

What is Culture?
 * **Culture** – meanings, conceptions and interpretive schemes that are activated, constructed, or brought “on-line” through participation in normative social institutions and practices giving shape to the psychological processes in individuals in a society
 * Cultures are systems of meaning (ways of interpreting, understanding, and explaining what is going on in the world around us)
 * Units of meaning are often represented in words which are the labels we use to symbolize certain categories of experience
 * Language distinctions are only one example of how a culture expresses meaning. There are also religious rituals, holidays, graduations, and marriage ceremonies. Also consider the national flag, an autograph by a celebrity or a monument commemorating a historical event. These things have certain meaning in the context of a particular culture’s history and social structure
 * How we think about the world and behave in it depend on the concepts we have learned, and how those concepts relate to each other
 * Differences in concepts and meanings can translate into substantial differences in behavior

Culture Differences in concepts of Emotion
 * Even when a language does have a word that translates as “emotion”, it might not refer to the same set of concepts that the English term does
 * Other languages have words that seem to correspond to the English word emotion, or to a particular emotion, except they refer to the situation rather than the internal feeling that the situation produces
 * Even if the physiological and behavioral aspects of emotion are highly similar around the world, culture influences how we talk about our emotions
 * There are certain emotion words that exist in some languages, but not others
 * Japan has a feeling of amae. This feeling has been described as pleasurable dependence on another person, like the feeling an infant has toward its mother.
 * **Sapir-Whorf hypothesis** – Humans require language to think, and therefore we have only those experiences, thoughts, and perceptions for which we have words
 * According to a weaker form of the hypothesis, people might more readily experience or express an emotion for which they have a word than one for which they lack a word
 * Researchers have found little evidence for the strong version of the hypothesis
 * Levy proposed that cultures **hyper-cognize** emotions that are important in that society, creating an elaborate network of definitions, associations and distinctions, and leading to an increase in vocabulary
 * Other emotions in a culture might be **hypo-cognized**, lacking much cognitive elaboration or detail

Cultural Differences in Emotion Processes
 * One major difference involved the roles of fairness and morality in emotional appraisals
 * One major influence culture can have on emotion lies in the meaning we attribute to various events
 * Some researchers have suggested that culturally encouraged “biases” in emotional appraisal may help explain differences in emotional aspects of personality—the frequency with which people experience various emotions
 * People throughout the world interpret a few facial expressions of emotion in similar ways. At the same time, certain expressions are clearly culture-specific.
 * People in some cultures (such as the US) tend to show very strong facial expressions, whereas people in other cultures (such as Japan) tend to show more subtle expressions
 * Some researchers have suggested that differences in the intensity of expression are due to differences in intensity of sympathetic nervous system arousal
 * Another explanation is that people learn from their culture that it is appropriate to amplify or conceal certain emotional expressions
 * Cultures differ somewhat in their rules for which emotions should be shown and which hidden, and under what circumstances. These cultural **display rules** are an important tool for any society.
 * Display rules raise particular difficulties for **bicultural** people, those who are members of more than one culture
 * A number of cultures encourage posing of appropriate emotional displays, without demanding that individuals actually feel what they express
 * In the United States people put a high premium on emotional genuineness
 * **Meta-analysis** – statistical technique combines the results of many different studies into a single analysis
 * People from different cultures show somewhat different facial expressions, even of possible basic emotions such as anger, fear, sadness and disgust
 * Research has found that the notion of dialects in facial expressions of emotion does happen

Aspects of Culture that Predict Differences in Emotion
 * People in Western cultures tend to be high on **individualism,** which emphasizes individual uniqueness, personal rights, being true to one’s self and independence from others
 * In contrast, many other cultures, including most South and East Asian cultures, emphasize **collectivism**, or prioritizing the group over the individual, valuing group identification, deference, social harmony and interdependence
 * Pride, shame, and guilt all appear to require an interpretation of whether the self is good or bad. However, “self” means different things to people in different cultures. In individualistic cultures, my “self” is distinct from the people around me. In collectivist cultures, “self” is more closely tied to group memberships and relationships with friends and family.
 * Another difference among cultures is the degree to which they emphasize power distance or social hierarchy
 * **Vertical society** is defined as one that emphasizes the social hierarchy, and encourages emotions and behaviors that advertise and reinforce status differences
 * **Horizontal society** is one in which people typically minimize attention to status differences and seldom acknowledge those differences publicly
 * The vertical versus horizontal dimension can influence emotional experience in several ways
 * Power distance can facilitate or discourage the experience of certain kinds of emotion
 * The emphasis on power distance in a society can also predict who displays what emotions
 * **Linear epistemology** – “knowing” something means knowing what is constant and unchanging about it, knowing how it differs from other things and knowing what is true and what is false
 * **Dialectical epistemology** – emphasizes that true knowledge involves understanding that reality is changing rather than constant, that all things are interrelated rather than separate, and that the same preposition can be both true and false, from different perspectives
 * Mixed emotions are uncommon among Americans, though people do report them occasionally. Researchers have asked whether this infrequency might be due to linear epistemology, which encourages Westerners to think of positive and negative emotion as mutually exclusive opposites.
 * In contrast, people from cultures emphasizing dialectical epistemology may be less likely to think of emotions in terms of opposites such as “happy or sad” and therefore may feel mixed emotions more often.

Methodological Issues in Studying Culture
 * The vast majority of psychological researchers come from prosperous, first-world countries and when they study culture it usually involves going to some other country and comparing that place with home
 * A second problem is that cultures do not follow national boundaries. Within the United States, cultures differ greatly between people of different ethnic backgrounds, religions, and regions of the country.
 * Culture itself is the third major difficulty in interpreting differences between two countries.
 * Studying the difference between two groups is not the same as studying culture
 * **Cultural priming** – studying bicultural people and using an experimental manipulation to make one of each person’s cultural identities especially salient before conducting the rest of the study

Integrating Evolutionary and Cultural Approaches
 * Paul Ekman’s Neuro-Cultural Theory was the first explicitly attempt to articulate where and how culture might influence universal emotion processes. In this model, evens in the environment may elicit particular appraisal or interpretations that then lead to an emotion. That emotion involves several biological features, including autonomic nervous system changes, cognitive biases, and automatic facial expressions generated by an innate and universal “facial action program”. If conditions are right then these biological features, as well as consciously felt motivations, lead to prototypical emotional behavior.
 * According to Ekman, it is possible, with effort, to override expressions triggered by the facial action program. Over time, when one has negated the “natural” expression enough times in the same kind of situation, this overriding can even become habitual.
 * Researchers working from the assumption that emotions are evolved responses to the environment think of sequences such as these as innate and universal. Russell has offered a somewhat different interpretation—that such sequences are socially constructed scripts or cultural beliefs about what events, thoughts, feelings and behaviors “go together”. Some combinations are inherently more common than others, thereby forming a “natural” pattern that is likely to receive universal recognition. According to Russell, emotion scripts can be broad or precise, can emphasize some components over others, and any given components or combination of components may be culture-specific or universal.
 * Keltner and Haidt built upon Ekman’s and Russell’s theories by specifying the levels of analysis at which one might expect universality versus cultural variation in emotion. The term “levels of analysis” refers to whether one looks at the big picture, the details that compose it, the details within the details and so forth.
 * According to Keltner and Haidt, any apparent evolution versus social construction conflict reflects confusion over levels of analysis. They propose that emotions need not have a single function, and that the emotion literature makes the most sense if you think about function at four different levels of analysis
 * The first is the intra-individual level—how does an emotion help the individual survive and reproduce? The second is the dyadic level—how do emotions help two people to form and maintain a relationship in a way that benefits them both? A third level is that of small groups, where emotions are used to negotiate everybody’s social roles. Fourth, emotions are functional at the level of the culture, in that we use stories, legends, gossip and other narratives, intended to evoke emotion, as ways of teaching a society’s values.
 * Keltner and Haidt propose that functions at the first two levels are largely innate and universal, but that the group and culture levels allow much room for variation.

By Elfenbein and Ambady
 * Universals and Cultural Differences in Recognizing Emotions**
 * Messages on an emotional level can cross the barrier of a cultural or species difference
 * The expression of emotion is largely universal, but there are subtle differences across cultures that can create a challenge for effective communication
 * Some cultures encourage the use of decoding rules, social norms that inhibit the understand of emotion in cases when understanding may be disruptive to social harmony.
 * Some languages are superior to others in their emotion vocabulary.
 * Researchers have found evidence for an in-group advantage in the understanding of emotion: Participants are generally more accurate in recognizing emotions expressed by members of their own culture than in recognizing emotions expressed by members of a different cultural group.
 * The Neurocultural Theory of Emotion posits the existence of a universal facial affect program that provides a one-to-one map between the emotion a person feels and the facial expression the person displays. According to this theory, the facial affect program is the same for all people in all cultures and therefore everyone expresses emotion in the same manner in nonsocial settings. In social settings, people use conscious "management techniques" called display rules to control and override the operation of the universal facial affect program.
 * Cultural differences in emotional expression are like "Dialects" of the "more universal grammar of emotion"
 * The universal language of emotion may also have dialects that differ subtly from each other.
 * Each cultural group has a specific affect program that incorporates some adjustment to the universal program. Acquired through social learning, these adjustments create subtle differences in the appearance of emotional expression across cultures.
 * Dialect theory suggests there is a direct link between the cultural differences that arise in the expression and perception of emotion.
 * Further work in this field has the potential to help bridge intergroup differences by contributing to training and intervention programs that can help to improve cross-cultural communication.

By Adam, Shirako and Maddux
 * Cultural Variance in the Interpersonal Effects of Anger in Negotiations**

Background Knowledge The research reported in this article is the first investigation of how the interpersonal effects of discrete emotions in negotiations vary across cultures These studies have generally shown that expressing anger is an effective negotiation strategy that elicits larger concessions compared with expressing other emotions or no emotions Results suggest that angry negotiators are perceived to be tougher and to have higher reservation prices than other negotiators, and that these perceptions are taken as signal that there will be negative consequences unless concessions are made Different cultural display rules make it relatively normative to express emotion expressions in Western, individualistic cultures, but to altogether suppress emotion expressions in East Asian, collectivist cultures

Hypothesis Anger would elicit larger concessions from Western negotiations, but smaller concessions from East Asian negotiators This influence of culture would be due to anger expressions being perceived as relatively appropriate among Western negotiators, but as relatively inappropriate among East Asian negotiators.

Study 1 Participants were asked to imagine that they were playing the role of a negotiator selling technical equipment Their character did not want to include a warranty in the deal, but the counterpart in the negotiation kept insisting on it In the no-anger condition, the last statement made by the counterpart were preceded by “Client, without being angry” In the anger condition, this description was changed to “Client, in an angry tone” Participants self-reported the likelihood of them including the warranty in the deal and the extent to which they perceived the counterpart as angry

Results of Study 1 The counterpart was perceived as angrier in the anger condition than in the no-anger condition (manipulation check) One’s cultural background affects one’s responses to anger in negotiations European American negotiators made larger concessions to angry opponents Asian and Asian American negotiators made smaller concessions to angry opponents Downside to this is that this is a hypothetical situation and doesn't show actual behaviors from the participants

Study 2 Instructions indicated that each participant would engage in a computer-mediated negotiation with another participant In reality the other participant’s behavior was simulated by the computer in order to ensure consistent behaviors from participants’ “negotiation partners” Participants played the role of a seller of mobile phones who had to negotiate the price, warranty period, and duration of a service contract The object was to earn as many points as possible In the no-anger condition, participants received only an intention statement; in the anger condition, participants received an anger statement in addition to the intention statement -the difference that enhanced the results from study 1 is that it is no longer hypothetical situations that the experimenters are studying. Now they are studying actual behaviors that participants are engaging in. This helps to be able to attribute the findings to real life situations and not just hypothetical ones

Results of Study 2 The buyer was perceived as angrier in the anger condition than in the no-anger condition (manipulation check) European Americans made larger concessions in the anger condition than in the no-anger condition In contrast, Asian and Asian Americans made smaller concessions in the anger condition than in the no-anger condition

Study 3 The procedure was the same as Study 2, except for the manipulation of anger appropriateness In the appropriate-anger condition, participants were told that most people express anger in negotiations and that it was acceptable to express anger during the study In the inappropriate-anger condition, participants were told that most people do not express anger in negotiations and it was unacceptable to express anger during the study In the default anger condition, participants received no information

Results of Study 3 European Americans made larger concessions than Asian and Asian Americans in the default anger condition (Results from Study 2) When the researchers explicitly manipulated anger expressions to be appropriate, Asian and Asian American negotiators made larger concessions to the angry opponent When the researchers explicitly manipulated anger expressions to be inappropriate, European American negotiators made smaller concessions to the angry opponent This pattern of finding suggests that cultural norms for the appropriateness of anger expressions drove the results in Study 1 and 2

Discussion This research demonstrates the important implications of cultural display rules for behavior in interpersonal settings It shifts the focus from cultural differences in perceptual reactions to cultural differences in behavioral reactions. Thus, even when emotion expressions are accurately recognized, culture plays an important role by influencing the behavioral reactions to them.