Emotions are culturally situated (original) (raw)
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Cognition and Emotion
Social Functionalist Theory (SFT) emerged 20 years ago to orient emotion science to the social nature of emotion. Here we expand upon SFT and make the case for how emotions, relationships, and culture constitute one another. First, we posit that emotions enable the individual to meet six "relational needs" within social interactions: security, commitment, status, trust, fairness, and belongingness. Building upon this new theorising, we detail four principles concerning emotional experience, cognition, expression, and the cultural archiving of emotion. We conclude by considering the bidirectional influences between culture, relationships, and emotion, outlining areas of future inquiry.
The Construction of Emotion in Interactions, Relationships, and Cultures
Emotion Review, 2012
Emotions are engagements with a continuously changing world of social relationships. In the present article, we propose that emotions are therefore best conceived as ongoing, dynamic, and interactive processes that are socially constructed. We review evidence for three social contexts of emotion construction that are embedded in each other: The unfolding of emotion within interactions, the mutual constitution of emotion and relationships, and the shaping of emotion at the level of the larger cultural context. Finally, we point to interdependencies amongst these contexts of construction and discuss future directions of a constructionist perspective.
Chapter 1: Introduction: Relationality across Western and Non-western Cultures
Relationality across East and West, 2024
This introduction outlines how the concept of relationality can offer a strong basis for cross-cultural dialogue between Western and non-Western traditions of moral and political philosophy. "Relationality" is congruent with notions of "reciprocity" in Western liberal thought, but can also go beyond this to suggest a constitutive embeddedness of the self in a web of social or communal relations. The introduction also discusses the appropriate interpretive framing for Western and non-Western forms of relational thought, given the hegemony of the former in the contemporary world. The final section of the introduction summarizes the contents of the remaining chapters in the volume.
Cultural differences in emotions: A context for interpreting emotional experiences
Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2003
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.
The cultural psychology of emotions
Handbook of emotions, 2016
Cultural differences in emotions inform us about the ways in which socio-cultural environments influence emotions. Cultural differences make us aware of our own culture:
International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, 2015
Research on culture and emotion has moved beyond the once central nature-nurture. Evidence suggests that there are universal constituents of emotionsthe 'emotional potential'rather than universal emotions. Furthermore, the emotional constituents are assembled in culture-specific ways that are meaningful and predictable, resulting in systematic cultural differences in 'emotional practices' (i.e., people's actual emotional lives). Whereas emotions are not universal, the underlying rule of emotional life is: Culturally adaptive emotions are more prevalent and intense. After reviewing empirical evidence for each of these claims, we outline some of the future directions for research on culture and emotion.
Cultural regulation of emotion: individual, relational, and structural sources
Frontiers in Psychology, 2013
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 people's environment and help them appraise events in culturally valued ways-and are afforded by structural conditions-people's 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.
The cultural psychology of emotion
Cultural differences in emotions inform us about the ways in which socio-cultural environments influence emotions. Cultural differences make us aware of our own culture:
The cultural construction of emotions
Current Opinion in Psychology, 2015
A large body of anthropological and psychological research on emotions has yielded significant evidence that emotional experience is culturally constructed: people more commonly experience those emotions that help them to be a good and typical person in their culture. Moreover, experiencing these culturally normative emotions is associated with greater wellbeing. In this review, we summarize recent research showing how emotions are actively constructed to meet the demands of the respective cultural environment; we discuss collective as well as individual processes of construction. By focusing on cultural construction of emotion, we shift the focus toward how people from different cultures 'do' emotions and away from which emotions they 'have'.