Emotions and Culture

Emotions and Culture ePortfolio Research Assignment

Lissann Lichtenstein
Salt Lake Community College
General Psychology 1010
Section 035

Emotions and Culture

Emotions and Culture ePortfolio Research Assignment

One of the many questions I have pondered about emotion is why there is such a negative
stigma towards expressing emotions that are not normally considered positive, such as sadness or
depression. My search for answers to this particular proved to be difficult with not many studies
about it. However, I was able to find studies on cultural influences on emotion expression and
interpretation that helped me to begin understanding why these stigmas might be.
Literature Review
One of the first sources I looked into was the World Happiness Index from 2015. The
goal of the index is to show where the nations in the world rank in the level of happiness so that
heads of state can find ways to improve in problem areas. The factors that were measured, as
reported by Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2015), were the GDP (Gross Domestic
Product) per capita, Social support, Healthy life expectancy at birth, Freedom to make life
choices, Generosity, Perceptions of corruption, Positive affect and Negative affect (see Appendix
A for more information on the specific definitions of these terms). The results showed that many
first-world countries took the top ten places in the index, with several of them in Europe.
Another study I looked into was actually in our textbook. In the Chapter on emotions, it
mentions a study by Hillel Aviezer, Yaacov Trope, and Alexander Todorov (Schacter, D. L.,
Gilbert, D. T., Wegner, D. M., & Nock, M. K. (2014), pg. 325) that wanted to find out how
accurately emotion can be determined from facial expressions, body language, and finally both
together in context. The results showed that little could be accurately interpreted from facial
expressions alone and that the entire picture is where the most accurate emotional interpretations
come from.
A final study I read was a journal article by Scherer, K. R., Banse, R., & Wallbott, H. G.

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(2001) on emotional inferences made based on specific vocal expression of anger, sadness, fear,
joy, and neutral (voiced by professional German actors) with information gathered from nine
countries in Europe, the United States, and Asia. Data show an overall accuracy of 66% across
all emotions and countries[and] patterns of confusion were very similar across all countries.
These data suggest the existence of similar inference rules from vocal expression across
cultures.
Limitations of these studies
One of the general limitations of all the studies was that it could not be said that everyone
was truthful in their answers. Mood, circumstance and personal definitions of certain ideas
could have differed answers in unforeseen ways. Some specific limitations of the World
Happiness Index were that there are 196 countries in the world, but only 158 are included in the
index. Also, the complexity of the details of the specific questions might have tripped
participants when the answers were much more simple then the question. A specific limitation of
the Aviezer, et. al. study is that there was no guarantee that a participant had not previously seen
these faces/body stances/athletes in the situation at their game. And a specific limitation of the
Scherer, et. al. study is language difference for many nations where German is not the primary
language meant that context could not play a role for all participants, meaning there may have
given an advantage in interpretation to those who could understand what the phrases actually
meant.
Conclusion
My understanding of these studies showed that while there are differences in definitions
and levels of happiness between cultures around the world, those differences do not differ the
way emotions are interpreted. Even across very different cultures (e.g. a third-world country

Emotions and Culture

versus a first-world country), the basic emotional expressions appear to be universal. As I read
through these studies, I realized that because there is a universal understanding of emotions,
there might also be a universal misunderstanding of emotions as well. We live in a world where
we always seek for the positive and avoid the negative as much as possible. Because of that, we
may misunderstand the value of negative emotions as inhibiting the learning life lessons rather
then trying to see what they can teach us. I also was reminded that different parts of emotions
and their expression are valued in different cultures, so there is no universal solution to
destigmatizing the emotions labeled as bad or negative. Hopefully, with more research, more will
be revealed as to what can be done to help better our understanding of what all emotions truly
mean and convey so that people everywhere can feel comfortable expressing them.

Emotions and Culture

References
Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2015). World Happiness Report 2015. Retrieved from
http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/04/WHR15.pdf
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., Wegner, D. M., & Nock, M. K. (2014). Chapter 8: Emotions and
Motivation. In Psychology (3rd ed., pp. 312-349). New York, NY: Worth.
Scherer, K. R., Banse, R., & Wallbott, H. G. (2001). Emotion Inferences from Vocal
Expression Correlate Across Languages and Cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology, 32(1), 76-92. doi:10.1177/0022022101032001009

Emotions and Culture

Appendix A
Meaning of terms used in World Happiness Index
I realized that there would not necessarily be room in my paper to include explanations on the
variables used in the World Happiness Index. However, I realized I needed to include them
somewhere, as they may not make sense otherwise.
GDP per capita is in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted to constant 2011
international dollars, taken from the World Development Indicators (WDI) released by the World
Bank in November 2014.
Social support is based on responses to the question If you were in trouble, do you have
relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?
The time series of healthy life expectancy at birth are constructed based on data from the
World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Development Indicators (WDI).
Freedom to make life choices is based on responses to the question Are you satisfied or
dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?
Generosity is based on responses to the question Have you donated money to a charity in
the past month?
Perceptions of corruption are based on the responses to two questions: Is corruption
widespread throughout the government or not? and Is corruption widespread within businesses
or not?
Positive affect is defined as the average of previous-day affect measures for happiness,
laughter and enjoyment for GWP waves 3-7 (years 2008 to 2012, and some in 2013). It is
defined as the average of laughter and enjoyment for other waves where the happiness question

Emotions and Culture

was not asked.
Negative affect is defined as the average of previous-day affect measures for worry, sadness
and anger for all waves.
(Definitions taken from Technical Box 2: Detailed information about each of the
predictors in Table 2.1, pg. 23 of the World Happiness Index 2015)