Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- PART I THE NATURE OF FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS
- 2 On the Passivity of the Passions
- 3 Emotions and Rationality
- 4 Emotions and Feelings
- 5 The Concept of an Evolved Fear Module and Cognitive Theories of Anxiety
- 6 Deconstructing the Emotions for the Sake of Comparative Research
- 7 From the Emotions of Conversation to the Passions of Fiction
- 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
- PART V FEELINGS, EMOTIONS, AND MORALITY
- Subject Index
- Author Index
- Plate section
- References
6 - Deconstructing the Emotions for the Sake of Comparative Research
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
- 2 On the Passivity of the Passions
- 3 Emotions and Rationality
- 4 Emotions and Feelings
- 5 The Concept of an Evolved Fear Module and Cognitive Theories of Anxiety
- 6 Deconstructing the Emotions for the Sake of Comparative Research
- 7 From the Emotions of Conversation to the Passions of Fiction
- 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
- PART V FEELINGS, EMOTIONS, AND MORALITY
- Subject Index
- Author Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
ABSTRACT
One of the central aims of the discipline of cultural psychology is to develop a theoretical language for the comparative study of mental states that makes it possible to understand and appreciate the mental life of members of other cultures. In this chapter the author suggests that the language of the emotions is not an ideal theoretical language for making progress on the study of mental states across human populations. It is argued that the idea of an emotion is a complex synthetic notion, composed of wants, beliefs, feelings and values; and that human mentalities may vary in how they give shape, and lend meaning, to the more fundamental and direct experience of wanting certain things, valuing certain things, knowing certain things and having particular somatic and affective feelings. The chapter considers the advantages of temporarily privileging the study of “feeling” over the study of the “emotions.”
What types of cross-cultural variations in “feelings and emotions” are we able to imagine, given our understanding of what it means to be a person (that is, a mentally endowed human being)? And what types of evidence on mental functioning in other cultures would we want to collect to convince us that those imaginable (and hence logically conceivable) variations in feelings and emotions are actually real? What predictions, if any, follow from the idea of having an “emotional” life?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Feelings and EmotionsThe Amsterdam Symposium, pp. 81 - 97Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
References
Briggs, J. L. (1970). Never in anger: Portrait of an Eskimo family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
(1988). Cross-cultural research in the socio-historical tradition. Human Development, 31, 137–157CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, M. (1990). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline? In J. J. Berman (Ed.), Cross-cultural perspectives. Nebraska symposium on motivation, 1989. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
D'Andrade, R. G. (1984). Cultural meaning systems. In R. A. Shweder and R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion (pp. 88–119). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
D'Andrade, R. G. (1987). A folk model of the mind. In N. Quinn and D. Holland (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressCrossRef
Ekman, P. (1980). Biological and cultural contributions to body and facial movement in the expression of emotions. In A. Rorty (Ed.), Explaining emotions (pp. 73–101). Berkeley: University of California Press
Ekman, P. (1984). Expression and the nature of emotion. In K. Scherer and P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 319–343). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
(1991). Some implications of cognitive appraisal theories of emotion. International Review of Studies of Emotion, 1, 143–161Google Scholar
Frijda, N. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books
(1997). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: “Surprise” in Malay and English. Culture and Psychology, 2, 153–181CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2001). Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology, 5, 1–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (1994). Semantic and lexical universals – theory and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Good, B. J., & Kleinman, A. M. (1984). Culture and anxiety: Cross-cultural evidence for the patterning of anxiety disorders. In A. H. Tuma and J. D. Maser (Eds.), Anxiety and the anxiety disorders. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
; ; & (1993). Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 613–628CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
; & (2002). Panic disorder, somatization, and the new cross-cultural psychiatry; or the seven bodies of a medical anthropology of panic. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 26, 155–178CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
; ; & (2001). A unique panic-disorder presentation among Khmer refugees: The sore-neck syndrome. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 25, 297–316CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press
LeVine, R. A. (1990). Infant environments in psychoanalysis: A cross-cultural view. In J. Stigler, R. Shweder, and G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development. New York: Cambridge University PressCrossRef
Levy, R. I. (1984). Emotion, knowing and culture. In R. A. Shweder and R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion (pp. 214–237). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Lutz, C. (1985). Depression and the translation of emotional worlds. In A. Kleinman and B. Good (Eds.), Culture and depression: Studies in the anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry of affect and disorder (pp. 63–100). Berkeley: University of California Press
, & (1986). The anthropology of emotions. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15, 405–436CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markus, H. R.; Kitayama, S.; & Heiman, R. (1998). Culture and “basic” psychological principles. In E. T. Higgins and A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles. New York: Guilford
Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (1994). Kali's tongue: Cultural psychology and the power of “shame” in Orissa, India. In H. Markus and S. Kitayama (Eds.), Culture and the emotions. Washington, DC: APA PublicationsCrossRef
Miller, J. G. (1997). Theoretical issues in cultural psychology. In H. Triandis (Ed.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 85–128). Boston: Allyn and Bacon
Nisbett, R. E., & Cohen, D. (1995). The culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the South. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Pike, K. (1967). Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior. The Hague: Mouton and Company
Rosaldo, M. Z. (1984). Toward an anthropology of self and feeling. In R. A. Shweder and R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion (pp. 137–157). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(1991). Culture and the categorization of emotions. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 426–450CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scherer, K. R.; Walbott, H. G.; & Summerfield, A. B. (1986). Experiencing emotion: A cross-cultural study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(1988). Suffering in style. (Review of the Social origins of disease and distress by Arthur Kleinman). Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 12, 479–497CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shweder, R. A. (1990). Cultural psychology: What is it? In J. Stigler, R. Shweder, and G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp. 1–43). New York: Cambridge University PressCrossRef
Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking through cultures: Expeditions in cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
(1993). Everything you ever wanted to know about cognitive appraisal theory without being conscious of it. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 322–326CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shweder, R. A. (1994). You're not sick, you're just in love: Emotion as an interpretive system. In P. Ekman and R. Davidson (Eds.), Questions about emotion. New York: Oxford University Press
Shweder, R. A. (2003). Why do men barbecue? Recipes for cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Shweder, R. A.; Goodnow, J.; Hatano, G.; LeVine, R. A.; Markus, H. R.; & Miller, P. (1998). The cultural psychology of development: One mind, many mentalities. In W. Damon (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology, Vol. 1, 5th ed. New York: Wiley
Shweder, R. A., & Haidt, J. (1999). Cultural psychology of the emotions: Ancient and new. In M. Lewis and J. Haviland (Eds.), The handbook of emotions. New York: Guilford
Shweder, R. A., & LeVine, R. A. (1984). Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
, & (1993). Cultural psychology: Who needs it?Annual Review of Psychology, 44, 497–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1991). The pseudoempirical in psychology and the case for psychologic. Psychological Inquiry, 2, 325–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1986). Human emotions: Universal or culture-specific?American Anthropologist, 88, 584–594CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1990). Special issue on the semantics of the emotions. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10 (2)Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals. New York: Cambridge University Press
- 19
- Cited by