01-06-2015

Contents
Title
page..............................................................................................................
............ pg 1.
Contents........................................................................................................
.................... pg 2.
Research
question
. pg 3.
Hypothesis
. pg 3.
Method
.... pg 3.
Results
.. pg 4.
Analysis
pg 5.
Discussion
... pg 5.
Conclusion

. pg 6.
Bibliography
pg 7.

Research question
Why does the expressing of emotions differ across cultures?

Hypothesis & Goals

Cultures are known to influence the way people behave and think, so its
kind of obvious that expressing emotions is culture related as well. On the
other hand, as emotions are a universal phenomena, it is also kind of
logical that some emotions may have the same meaning within different
cultures throughout the world. The goal of this research is to find out why
do we express emotions differently across various cultures.

Methodology
At first, I could not really find lots of useful sources but after doing some
fine research I discovered really useful sources. Finding a research
question seemed as an easy job but actually it was quite challenging.
However, I managed to find a really interesting topic which I am going to
discuss throughout this research assignment. The reason why I chose this
topic is because I have already read about this topic several times which
encouraged me to do a research about this specific topic. The method I
used for this research questions, was analyzing various sources which
compared the expressing of emotions across various cultures. I found
several sources which deal with the cultural influence regarding emotions
and I combined them to form this research assignment.

Results

It is all well-known fact that everybody on this planet feels emotion. An

emotion is a mental state that occur spontaneous rather than conscious
thought. When we put this in global perspective, the difference is how we
interpret the expression of emotions when they derive from other cultures.
Cultural contexts behave as cues (signals) when people are trying to
interpret emotional expressions, mainly facial expressions. Within our
everyday life we get information from our environment which influences
our vision on the various emotional expressions. People can only focus on
a small part of the possible events in their continuously and complex
environment. Fine research suggests that people from different cultures
attend to really different things. With this I mean that different cultures
could interpret the same emotion in different ways. Example: In the USA,
male friends usually do not hug nor kiss each other as a form of greeting.
This behavior would make most American men feel uncomfortable or even
angry. In many European countries, however, friends normally hug and
kiss each other on both cheeks. Avoiding this would be seen as unfriendly.
There have been many ethnographical studies about the socio-cultural
functions of emotions but the study of Enkamn and Friesen is absolutely
one of the most famous. It is based on the comparison of facial
expressions and emotions in different cultures. There are six basic
emotions expressed on the faces: happiness, disgust, surprise, anger, fear
and sadness. These basic types of emotion are independent from culture
and language. Complicated emotions like love, jealousy, pride are
completely different from basic emotions, since they require awareness of
the individual regarding other people, and it requires an attitude towards
other people. Complicated emotions are therefore more likely to be

dependent on cultural background than basic emotions. Research has

shown that over 90% of the people could guess the basic emotion while
only 40% could guess the complicated emotions. Therefore these so-called
complicated are more dependent to culture and the basic emotions are
almost universal known.

Our culture
provides us
structure,
expectations,
guidelines,
and rules to
help people be
aware and
interpret
emotions.
There are
cultural
differences in
social
consequences.
An example of this is the Utku Eskimo population where anger is barely
expressed and in the occasions that it appeared, it resulted in ostracism
(voting away people). In many Asian cultures social harmony is more
important than individual gain, wherein Europe most people prefer
individual promotion. These cultural expectations of the emotions are
regarded as display rules. We learn these rules during our socialization
process. These rules govern the way in which emotions are expressed, and
this varies among cultures. Cultural scripts state how positive and
negative emotions should be experienced, and may also help people
choose to regulate their emotions.

Analysis & Discussion

It seems like within this research assignment my hypothesis was right. It

was right because I said that some emotions are so universal that they are
all expressed in the same way. However, I have learned the difference
between basic emotions and complicated emotions. I now know that these
complicated emotions are more connected to the individual cultures while
the basic emotions are more universal and therefore well-known.
Furthermore, our cultural background provides cues which we need to

interpret various emotional expressions. This means that two different

people from two different cultures could think of the same emotion but
they interpret it in a different way. Your vision on the interpretation of
emotions is created by your everyday environment, since not everybody
lives in the same environment people will have a different vision on how to
express a certain emotion. Before starting this research report I could not
really imagine that culture would influence the way you express certain
emotions. However, research has shown that it absolutely does. I have
learned a lot from this research report and I hope that via this report you
will learn much more from this topic. This topic is extremely interesting
and I really enjoyed making this report. The thing that I had difficulties
with was finding a clear description of the studies of Enkamn and Friesen.
That study plays an important role in this research and should therefore be
mentioned properly. The thing that I am going to improve the next time is
making a clearer action plan because it took me too long to actually start
up. The next time I will therefore make a clear action plan with all the
things I will need to deal with.

Conclusion

The answer to my research question is: Yes! Culture influences the way
you express and interpret emotions. We can distinguish two types of
emotions here: the basic type and the more complicated one which is
more dependent on cultures. My hypothesis was partly right because some
emotions are universal and others are really dependent on the
environment you are living in. Every culture has got a different
environment and the people spend their times doing different things which
causes the variation in interpreting and expressing emotions

Bibliography
1. http://psych.stanford.edu/~tsailab/PDF/Culture%20and%20Emotion
%20Chapter.pdf
2. http://study.com/academy/lesson/how-emotions-differ-acrosscultures.html
3. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/march/cultural-differencessympathy-032525.html
4. http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/09/16/expression-of-emotion-variesby-culture/18257.html

5. https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundlesspsychology-textbook/emotion-13/influence-of-culture-on-emotion411/influence-of-culture-on-emotion-263-12798/
6. Book: Emotional Intelligence.