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The social roles and functions of emotions

(from the chapter) discuss the ways in which the sociocultural environment can be expected to influence the emotional processes, the roles and functions of these processes in social interaction, and the influences of the sociocultural environment upon those roles and functions / discuss the modes of influence on emotions of the immediate context of social interaction in which emotions arise and of the values, norms, and cognitive customs prevalent in a given culture / briefly outline the conception of emotions that guides our analysis

Cultural Affordances and Emotional Experience: Socially Engaging and Disengaging Emotions in Japan and the United States

The authors hypothesized that whereas Japanese culture encourages socially engaging emotions (e.g., friendly feelings and guilt), North American culture fosters socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride and anger). In two cross-cultural studies, the authors measured engaging and disengaging emotions repeatedly over different social situations and found support for this hypothesis. As predicted, Japanese showed a pervasive tendency to reportedly experience engaging emotions more strongly than they experienced disengaging emotions, but Americans showed a reversed tendency. Moreover, as also predicted, Japanese subjective well-being (i.e., the experience of general positive feelings) was more closely associated with the experience of engaging positive emotions than with that of disengaging emotions. Americans tended to show the reversed pattern. The established cultural differences in the patterns of emotion suggest the consistent and systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time.

Beyond the emotional event: Six studies on the social sharing of emotion

Abstract We argue that emotion cannot only be conceived of as a short-lived and intrapersonal phenomenon. Rather, based on five theoretical arguments, we propose that the social sharing of an emotional experience forms an integral part of the emotional processes. A series of six studies investigated different aspects of this hypothesis. Study 1 showed that an overwhelming majority of people reported sharing their emotional experiences and that the memories of these experiences tended to come back spontaneously to their consciousness. No difference was found among emotions. Using a different procedure, Studies 2 and 3 replicated these findings in two different populations. In addition, these studies provided indications that women share their experiences with a wider array of individuals than do men. The first three studies did not find any differences among emotions, but they did not include shame. It could be argued that people are less inclined to socially share shame experiences which are typically eli...

Context in Emotion Perception

We review recent work demonstrating consistent context effects during emotion perception. Visual scenes, voices, bodies, other faces, cultural orientation, and even words shape how emotion is perceived in a face, calling into question the still-common assumption that the emotional state of a person is written on and can be read from the face like words on a page. Incorporating context during emotion perception appears to be routine, efficient, and, to some degree, automatic. This evidence challenges the standard view of emotion perception represented in psychology texts, in the cognitive neuroscience literature, and in the popular media and points to a necessary change in the basic paradigm used in the scientific study of emotion perception.

Emotions in collectivist and individualist contexts

A theory of cultural differences in emotions was tested in a questionnaire study. Hypotheses about the differences between emotion in individualist and collectivist contexts covered different components of emotion: concerns and appraisals, action readiness, social sharing, and belief changes. The questionnaire focused on 6 types of events that were rated as similar in meaning across cultures. Participants were 86 Dutch individualist respondents and 171 Surinamese and Turkish collectivist respondents living in the Netherlands. As compared with emotions in individualist cultures, emotions in collectivist cultures (a) were more grounded in assessments of social worth and of shifts in relative social worth, (b) were to a large extent taken to reflect reality rather than the inner world of the individual, and (c) belonged to the self-other relationship rather than being confined to the subjectivity of the self.

Sentimental Stereotypes: Emotional Expectations for High-and Low-Status Group Members

Three vignette studies examined stereotypes of the emotions associated with high-and low-status group members. In Study 1a, participants believed that in negative situations, high-status people feel more angry than sad or guilty and that low-status people feel more sad and guilty than angry. Study 1b showed that in response to positive outcomes, high-status people are expected to feel more pride and low-status people are expected to feel more appreciation. Study 2 showed that people also infer status from emotions: Angry and proud people are thought of as high status, whereas sad, guilty, and appreciative people are considered low status. The authors argue that these emotion stereotypes are due to differences in the inferred abilities of people in high and low positions. These perceptions lead to expectations about agency appraisals and emotions related to agency appraisals. In Study 3, the authors found support for this process by manipulating perceptions of skill and finding the same differences in emotion expectations.

Long-lasting Cognitive and Social Consequences of Emotion: Social Sharing and Rumination

It is proposed that emotion has long-lasting cognitive and social consequences as it is observed for traumatic events. Indeed, emotion, like trauma, is characterized by a sudden disruption of the normal course of events, challenging peoples belief systems about themselves and the world and calling for extensive cognitive and social processing. We propose that mental rumination and social sharing constitute fundamental aspects of this processing. In this chapter, we present the results of an integrated programme of research investigating the nature and functions of mental ruminations and social sharing that follow emotional events. A number of questions are addressed, such as whether people do share their emotions, to what extent, with whom, and for which types of emotion. Culture, sex and age differences are also considered. A functional model of rumination and social sharing in emotion is proposed and tested. Finally, five theoretical arguments relate the empirical findings of our research programme to ...

Is Perceived Emotional Support Beneficial? Well-Being and Health in Independent and Interdependent Cultures

Previous studies show there is little or no association between perceived emotional support and well-being in European American culture. The authors hypothesized that this paradoxical absence of any benefit of perceived support is unique to cultural contexts that privilege independence rather than interdependence of the self. Study 1 tested college students and found, as predicted, that among Euro-Americans a positive effect of perceived emotional support on subjective well-being (positive affect) was weak and, moreover, it disappeared entirely once self-esteem was statistically controlled. In contrast, among Asians in Asia (Japanese and Filipinos) perceived emotional support positively predicted subjective well-being even after self-esteem was controlled. Study 2 extended Study 1 by testing both Japanese and American adults in midlife with respect to multiple indicators of well-being and physical health. Overall, the evidence underscores the central significance of culture as a moderator of the effectiveness of perceived emotional support.

Different emotional lives

Cultural differences in daily emotions were investigated by administering emotion questionnaires four times a day throughout a one-week period. Respondents were American students, Japanese students living in the United States, and Japanese students living in Japan. Americans rated their emotional lives as more pleasant than did the Japanese groups. The dimension of emotional pleasantness (unpleasant-pleasant) was predicted better by interdependent than independent concerns in the Japanese groups, but this was not the case in the American group where the variance predicted by interdependent and independent concerns did not significantly differ. It is argued that cultural differences in the concerns most strongly associated with pleasantness are related to differences in ideals, norms, and practices of what it means to be a person. Cultural differences in the concerns are assumed to implicate differences in the nature of emotional experience.

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.