Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- PART I THE NATURE OF FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS
- PART II BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS
- PART III FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS: THE PLACE OF PLEASURE
- PART IV FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS IN THEIR SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT
- 18 The Development of Individual Differences in Understanding Emotion and Mind
- 19 Emotional Intelligence
- 20 Culture and Emotion
- 21 Emotion Norms, Emotion Work, and Social Order
- PART V FEELINGS, EMOTIONS, AND MORALITY
- Subject Index
- Author Index
- Plate section
- References
20 - Culture and Emotion
Models of Agency as Sources of Cultural Variation in Emotion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- PART I THE NATURE OF FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS
- PART II BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS
- PART III FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS: THE PLACE OF PLEASURE
- PART IV FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS IN THEIR SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT
- 18 The Development of Individual Differences in Understanding Emotion and Mind
- 19 Emotional Intelligence
- 20 Culture and Emotion
- 21 Emotion Norms, Emotion Work, and Social Order
- PART V FEELINGS, EMOTIONS, AND MORALITY
- Subject Index
- Author Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
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.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Feelings and EmotionsThe Amsterdam Symposium, pp. 341 - 358Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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