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Problem 4 of CCP minor
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Problem 4: Emotions How emotions are expressed and interpreted across cultures.
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3.1 P4: EmotionsHeine: Emotions in Cultural Psychology
What is Emotion?
James-Lange theory
- Emotions are physiological responses – e.g. person sees bear, experiences fear
because their heart beats faster (+ other autonomic changes)
- Body responds to environmental stimuli by preparing us to react in order for survival
(e.g. running away from bear), and emotions are bodily cues that signal how we
should behave
+ support: some distinctive physiological patterns correspond to certain emotions
Schachter-Singer: Two-Factor theory of emotions
- Autonomic nervous system too clumsy & slow
- Instead, emotions based on 2 factors: 1) Physiological responses and 2) Interpretation
of those responses
- Person sees bear physiological response interpret this physiological response
fear
- Experiment:
participants interpret feelings as either euphoria or anger. Confederate in euphoria
condition played around, was happy, in anger condition tried to incite anger in
participants by complaining about questions in questionnaire
physiological arousal: participants given injection. Placebo condition, epinephrine-
informed condition (told that epinephrine shot would increase arousal) vs.
epinephrine-uninformed condition (told epinephrine shot would not increase arousal)
– participants would feel physiological arousal but not know where it was coming
from and would look to situation to interpret their feelings.
strongest emotions experienced by epinephrine-uninformed condition
placebo condition experienced little arousal, therefore little emotion
Comparing the 2 theories
- James-Lange: emotions are based on physiological responses, therefore evolutionary
origin, emotions are a survival mechanism suggests that people in all cultures
would have same emotional experiences.
- Two-factor theory: emotions are interpretations of physiological signals & emotions
are constructed from the belief systems that shape people’s interpretations
emotions differ across cultures
Varieties of Emotional Experience
Emotions & Facial Expressions
Evidence for cultural universality:
- Darwin emotional facial expressions common to all people around the world
Various facial expressions evolved as a product of natural selection, form of
nonverbal communication
- Ekman & Friesan took many photos of people making 6 different emotional
expressions: happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness, anger and fear
Participants had to match photo w/emotion. They identified emotion correctly 80-90%
of the time.
- similar responses may be because the 5 cultures weren’t that different from each
other – all industrialised, exposed to the same media images
, To address this problem, they chose sample from Papua New Guinea, not
influenced by Western media.
PNG sample still smiled, frowned, etc. the same – shows that certain facial
expressions are universal
Proposed that there are 6 basic emotions: happiness, surprise, sadness, anger,
disgust, fear (some evidence that pride might be a basic, universal emotion too – but
pride involves whole body, not just the face)
Evidence for cultural variability:
- People from some cultures perform better than others at identifying emotions –
success for identifying American-posed faces was better for English speakers than for
speakers of other European languages (e.g. Swedish, Greek, Spanish) and non-
European languages (e.g. Japanese, Turkish) and all these groups performed better
than preliterate societies (e.g. Papa New Guinea sample). Americans performed the
best at identifying emotions of American-posed faces.
- Elfenbein & Ambady: meta-analysis on cross-cultural recognition of facial
expressions
People more accurate at judging facial expressions of people from their own
culture than from other culture
People are best at recognising emotional expressions of those who they’ve had the
most exposure
Therefore: faces are interpreted to indicate similar emotions across cultures, but
degree to which each expression is recognised varies
People can also guess where person is from, from their facial expressions, cannot
make same distinctions if they are showing neutral faces
People from lower socioeconomic background are more accurate at identifying
emotions in facial expressions – people w/lower social status pay closer attention to
possible thoughts & feelings of those of higher status
Parts of face being observed: Japanese more likely to conceal emotions they feel
are disruptive, but that is hard to hide around eyes/mouth
Study: top half of face had different emotion to bottom half, participants were asked
to say what emotion was being expressed – Japanese were more influenced by top of
the picture (the eyes) than Americans, who looked at bottom of the picture (the
mouth)
Cultural Display Rules
- Display rules = culturally specific rules that govern which facial expression is
appropriate in each situation – therefore, people vary across cultures how strongly
they express emotions, but they may be experiencing the same feeling
- Immigration history: heterogeneous cultures (e.g. USA) because of people
immigrating, other cultures homogeneous (e.g. Korea) share more accumulated
knowledge, so they can infer meanings from each other w/o need for explicit
communication. In heterogeneous cultures, people share less knowledge, so have to
communicate more openly to be understood. Having cultural display rules that
encourage emotional expressivity is one way people can clearly communicate their
feelings.
- Can influence gestures & facial expressions:
When Americans feel embarrassment, they turn away, but Indians often express
embarrassment by sticking out their tongue
The expression on the left is recognised by both cultures as embarrassment, but only
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