Jozefien De Leersnyder

Culture and emotion

ABSTRACT This chapter discusses in what ways culture influences emotional processes. The authors propose that different cultural models of agency may influence various aspects of emotions, thus accounting for cultural variance. A distinction is made between a conjoint model of agency, more common in collectivist cultures, and a disjoint model of agency, more often found in individualist cultures. Studies are reviewed that compare members from individualist and collectivist cultures in their selection of emotional events, their appraisal of events, and the way they cope with events. CULTURE AND EMOTION: MODELS OF AGENCY AS SOURCES OF CULTURAL VARIATION IN EMOTION We must admit that we have always thought of our own emotions as natural , not cultural. The reason, we suspect, is that our emotions were socialized to fit the cultural realities within which we lived for many years: Dutch and North American middle-class environments, respectively. As long as our emotions were in concordance with the cultural environment that afforded and supported them, the cultural constitution of these emotions remained invisible to us. We both gained some perspective on the culture-specificity of our emotions when we came to engage in cultural environments with which our emotions were at odds. For the first author, this happened upon moving to the United States. American people initially seemed unnaturally happy, smiling a lot and asserting several times a day that they felt “great.”

Where Do My Emotions Belong? A Study of Immigrants’ Emotional Acculturation

The emotional experiences of people who live together tend to be similar; this is true not only for dyads and groups but also for cultures. It raises the question of whether immigrants’ emotions become more similar to host culture patterns of emotional experience; do emotions acculturate? Two studies, on Korean immigrants in the United States (Study 1) and on Turkish immigrants in Belgium (Study 2), measured emotional experiences of immigrants and host group members with the Emotional Patterns Questionnaire. To obtain a measure of the immigrants’ emotional similarity to the host group, their individual emotional patterns were correlated to the average pattern of the host group. Immigrants’ exposure to and engagement in the host culture, but not their acculturation attitudes, predicted emotional acculturation.

Cultural regulation of emotion: individual, relational, and structural sources.

The most prevalent and intense emotional experiences differ across cultures. These differences in emotional experience can be understood as the outcomes of emotion regulation, because emotions that fit the valued relationships within a culture tend to be most common and intense. We review evidence suggesting that emotion regulation underlying cultural differences in emotional experience often takes place at the point of emotion elicitation through the promotion of situations and appraisals that are consistent with culturally valued relationships. These regulatory processes depend on individual tendencies, but are also co-regulated within relationships—close others shape peoples environment and help them appraise events in culturally valued ways—and are afforded by structural conditions—peoples daily lives “limit” the opportunities for emotion, and afford certain appraisals. The combined evidence suggests that cultural differences in emotion regulation go well beyond the effortful regulation based on display rules.

Feeling right is feeling good: psychological well-being and emotional fit with culture in autonomy- versus relatedness-promoting situations

The current research tested the idea that it is the cultural fit of emotions, rather than certain emotions per se, that predicts psychological well-being. We reasoned that emotional fit in the domains of life that afford the realization of central cultural mandates would be particularly important to psychological well-being. We tested this hypothesis with samples from three cultural contexts that are known to differ with respect to their main cultural mandates: a European American (N = 30), a Korean (N = 80), and a Belgian sample (N = 266). Cultural fit was measured by comparing an individual’s patterns of emotions to the average cultural pattern for the same type of situation on the Emotional Patterns Questionnaire (De Leersnyder et al., 2011). Consistent with our hypothesis, we found evidence for “universality without uniformity”: in each sample, psychological well-being was associated with emotional fit in the domain that was key to the cultural mandate. However, cultures varied with regard to the particular domain involved. Psychological well-being was predicted by emotional fit (a) in autonomy-promoting situations at work in the U.S., (b) in relatedness-promoting situations at home in Korea, and (c) in both autonomy-promoting and relatedness-promoting situations in Belgium. These findings show that the experience of culturally appropriate patterns of emotions contributes to psychological well-being. One interpretation is that experiencing appropriate emotions is itself a realization of the cultural mandates.

Acculturation of Personality: A Three-Culture Study of Japanese, Japanese Americans, and European Americans

The present study tests the hypothesis that involvement with a new culture instigates changes in personality of immigrants that result in (a) better fit with the norms of the culture of destination and (b) reduced fit with the norms of the culture of origin. Participants were 40 Japanese first-generation immigrants to the United States, 57 Japanese monoculturals, and 60 U.S. monoculturals. All participants completed the Jackson Personality Inventory as a measure of the Big Five; immigrants completed the Japanese American Acculturation Scale. Immigrants’ fits with the cultures of destination and origin were calculated by correlating Japanese American mothers’ patterns of ratings on the Big Five with the average patterns of ratings of European Americans and Japanese on the same personality dimensions. Japanese Americans became more “American” and less “Japanese” in their personality as they reported higher participation in the U.S. culture. The results support the view that personality can be subject to cultural influence.

What's hampering measurement invariance: detecting non-invariant items using clusterwise simultaneous component analysis

The issue of measurement invariance is ubiquitous in the behavioral sciences nowadays as more and more studies yield multivariate multigroup data. When measurement invariance cannot be established across groups, this is often due to different loadings on only a few items. Within the multigroup CFA framework, methods have been proposed to trace such non-invariant items, but these methods have some disadvantages in that they require researchers to run a multitude of analyses and in that they imply assumptions that are often questionable. In this paper, we propose an alternative strategy which builds on clusterwise simultaneous component analysis (SCA). Clusterwise SCA, being an exploratory technique, assigns the groups under study to a few clusters based on differences and similarities in the component structure of the items, and thus based on the covariance matrices. Non-invariant items can then be traced by comparing the cluster-specific component loadings via congruence coefficients, which is far more parsimonious than comparing the component structure of all separate groups. In this paper we present a heuristic for this procedure. Afterwards, one can return to the multigroup CFA framework and check whether removing the non-invariant items or removing some of the equality restrictions for these items, yields satisfactory invariance test results. An empirical application concerning cross-cultural emotion data is used to demonstrate that this novel approach is useful and can co-exist with the traditional CFA approaches.

Distinguishing between level and impact of rumination as predictors of depressive symptoms: An experience sampling study

Rumination—repetitively thinking about ones emotional state, its causes and consequences—exacerbates negative mood and plays an important role in the aetiology and maintenance of depression. Yet, it is unclear whether increased vulnerability to depression is associated with simply how much a person ruminates, or the short-term impact rumination has on a persons negative mood. In the current study, we distinguish between the level versus the impact of rumination, and we examine how each uniquely predicts changes in depressive symptoms over time in an undergraduate sample. Using experience sampling, we assessed students’ (N = 101) subjective experiences of positive and negative affect and their use of rumination and distraction in daily life for seven days. Participants also reported their depressive symptoms before and after the experience sampling. Increases in depressive symptoms over the week were predicted by how much people ruminated, but not by its impact on negative mood.

Emotions and concerns: Situational evidence for their systematic co-occurrence

People experience emotions when events are relevant to their current concerns, that is, when events affect their goals, values, or motives that are pertinent at that time. In the current research, we focused on one kind of concern—values—and examined whether different types of concerns are associated with different categories of emotion. More specifically, we investigated whether, at the situation level, the relevance of different types of values is linked to the intensity of different types of emotional experience. We conducted two retrospective survey studies (Studies 1 and 2)—one of which was cross-cultural—and one experience-sampling study (Study three). Together, the three studies provide convergent evidence for associations between the situational relevance of self-focused values (e.g., ambition, success) and socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride, anger) on the one hand, and between the relevance of other-focused values (e.g., loyalty, helping) and socially engaging emotions (e.g., closeness, shame) on the other. These findings challenge the (often implicit) assumption of emotion theories that different types of concerns are interchangeable—that is, that it does not matter for emotion which concern is relevant as long as one is. In contrast, the current research proposes that different concerns are constitutive elements of different emotional experiences and thus encourages new ways of thinking about emotions.

Doing emotions: the role of culture in everyday emotions

ABSTRACT Emotional 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.

Feeling ‘Right’ When You Feel Accepted: Emotional Acculturation In Daily Life Interactions With Majority Members

When immigrant minority individuals engage in frequent and positive social contact with majority culture members, their emotions become a better fit with the majority norm; the increased fit is called emotional acculturation. In the current research, we test the prediction that high-quality interactions with majority others, in which minorities feel accepted, increase the likelihood of emotional fit. We also explore whether this prediction holds true for both positive and negative interactions with majority. To test this prediction, we conducted a 7-day daily diary study with minority students in Belgian middle schools (N = 117). Each day, participants reported one positive and one negative interaction at school. They subsequently evaluated each interaction (e.g., felt accepted), assessed their relationship with the interaction partner (e.g., our relationship is important to me), and rated their emotions. Analyses focused on the interactions with Belgian majority interaction partners. Emotional acculturation was computed for positive and negative interactions separately, by calculating the fit between the emotional pattern of the minority student and the average emotional pattern of a sample of majority participants (N = 106) who also took part in the daily diary. As predicted, we found higher emotional fit in positive interactions when immigrant minorities felt accepted by the interaction partner. In contrast to this finding for positive interactions, emotional fit for negative interactions was higher when minorities felt excluded by the interaction partner. Further analyses on the negative interactions suggested that minority adolescents felt more negative autonomy-promoting emotions (e.g., anger and frustration) when they perceived being excluded. Given that Belgian majority youth feel more autonomy-promoting emotions generally, minorities’ fit with majority patterns was higher. The results confirm our hypothesis that minorities’ fit with majority emotions is contingent on the quality of their interactions with majority, even if in negative interactions, high-quality interactions produced less rather than more emotional fit. Our findings suggest that emotional acculturation is not just a ‘skill’ that minority individuals acquire, but also a response to the ways in which interactions with majority others develop. Inclusive interactions, especially when they are positive, appear to align immigrant minority individuals with the majority norm.