1.1.1 Emotions

As sketched thus far, scholars tend to disagree on what emotions “really” are. Part of the issue (and perhaps also the solution) is to acknowledge that emotions are “big” phenomena: They consist of many aspects that are difficult to study in conjunction. This is illustrated in the old Indian parable of the elephant that is being investigated by blind(folded) people, each focusing on a different part of the huge animal (Sujato, Reference Sujato2021). While some conclude “It’s a snake” after examining the trunk, others speculate “It’s a spear,” “It’s a wall” or “It’s a rope” after examining the elephant’s tusks, flanks or tail, respectively. While all these different components together constitute the animal and are a valid object of study on their own, staring at one component only misleads scientists’ conclusions about the whole. In a similar vein, emotions can be thought of as consisting of different components that only in conjunction make up the phenomenon we aim to study and understand. As will become clear throughout the chapters in this book, emotion scientists tend to focus on one or a few components of emotion at a time. While being a perfectly legitimate working method and also a practical necessity to conduct any research on any complex phenomenon, we as readers should bear in mind that conclusions on one component do not imply anything about the other components that constitute the whole.

Within emotion science, the most commonly agreed upon and widely studied components of emotion are people’s (1) appraisals or evaluations of the event; (2) action tendencies or ways in which they feel an urge to act upon the event; (3) subjective feelings associated with the event which are often captured via emotion words or other kinds of labels; (4) physiological changes in the body or the brain; and (5) facial or bodily configurations that are often means of communicating about the event (see e.g., Scherer, Reference Scherer2005). While most of these different “components of emotion” are just building blocks of human functioning and thus ever present in an awake state, they are thought to get organized into an emergent subjective experience we call “emotion” when people say “yes” to the primary appraisal of goal relevance – “Are any of my goals involved here, any of my core beliefs and values?” (Lazarus, Reference Lazarus1991, p. 42). Importantly, this appraisal can be made not only in a conscious way and in response to an event, but also in an unconscious way (see Moors et al., Reference Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer and Frijda2013 for a discussion of appraisal theories) and in anticipation of the world, such as when the brain is – in a fraction of a second – trying to predict what is going to happen next (Barrett, Reference Barrett2017). Therefore, my current working definition of emotion is that it is an episode of changes in multiple organismic subsystems upon evaluating or predicting the world as potentially relevant to one’s major concerns.

This latter insight on the importance of concerns in emotions as well as the centrality of both appraisals and action tendencies in what is thought to be an emotional episode, highlights why emotions can provide so many insights into people’s behaviors and relationships. Emotions are not merely subjective feelings or changes in our physiology; above all, they reflect what we find important and how people take a stance in their (social) world (see also De Leersnyder et al., Reference De Leersnyder, Koval, Kuppens and Mesquita2018, Reference De Leersnyder, Boiger, Mesquita, Gelfand, Chui and Hong2021; Mesquita, Reference Mesquita, Mesquita, Barrett and Smith2010; Mesquita et al., Reference Mesquita, Boiger and De Leersnyder2017; Solomon, Reference Solomon2004). Indeed, as Batja Mesquita has argued throughout her career, every time people are emoting – yes, we like to think of emotions as being a dynamic, ongoing, active (and collaborative) process we do rather than have (see Boiger & Mesquita, Reference Boiger and Mesquita2012; Mesquita, Reference Mesquita, Mesquita, Barrett and Smith2010; Mesquita et al., Reference Mesquita, Boiger and De Leersnyder2017) – people take a stance: They give a particular meaning to what is happening to them in the world and prepare themselves for appropriate action (e.g., Frijda, Reference Frijda1986). To make this clearer, I will contrast the emotional episodes of “anger” and “shame.”Footnote ¹ When “angry,” people typically feel threatened in their concern for autonomy, do not accept how others treat them and tend to hold others responsible for that negative outcome, feeling entitled to more than they are getting (De Leersnyder et al., Reference De Leersnyder, Koval, Kuppens and Mesquita2018; Kuppens et al., Reference Kuppens, Van Mechelen, Smits and De Boeck2003; Roseman, Reference Roseman1991). Through slamming a door or clenching their teeth, people typically aim to (re)gain control, influence the other person and correct their behavior (Frijda, Reference Frijda2007; Frijda, et al., Reference Frijda, Kuipers and ter Schure1989; Stein et al., Reference Stein, Trabasso, Liwag, Lewis and Haviland1993). Yet, when “ashamed,” people typically hold themselves responsible for a negative outcome and tend to think they’ve fallen short in the eyes of others or transgressed social norms. They are concerned with social relationships, hierarchy and their community (Boiger et al., Reference Boiger, Güngör, Karasawa and Mesquita2014; De Leersnyder et al., Reference De Leersnyder, Koval, Kuppens and Mesquita2018; Fung, Reference Fung1999). Through blushing, apologizing, stumbling or hiding, people seek to signal their awareness of the transgression, thereby aiming to restore their social relationships (e.g., Keltner and Buswell, Reference Keltner and Buswell1997). Thus, since emoting implies giving meaning and undertaking social action, emotions are “not an inner phenomenon so much as a way of being-in-the-world” Solomon, Reference Solomon, Shweder and LeVine1984, p. 250) – an insight that urges us to look at potential differences in meanings, actions and ways of being in the world and, thus, to take a closer look at culture.

1.1.2 Culture

One of the things that make humans unique compared to other species is our capacity for accumulative cultural learning (e.g., Tomassello, Reference Tomasello1999) through which they develop a culture – that is, a “socially transmitted system of meanings and practices that is shared among group members and that helps them navigate their daily, social, and spiritual lives” (De Leersnyder, Reference De Leersnyder, Dukes and Clement2019, p. 206). Cultures typically comprise a system of meanings that is made up of representations, ideas, values, attitudes, prototypes and other symbolic forms, which people agree are good, normal and valuable. These form the backdrop against which people perceive and evaluate the world and are, therefore, reflected in individuals’ thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Furthermore, cultures also typically consist of a system of practices that includes typical ways of engaging in interpersonal interactions (e.g., politeness rules), the formation and organization of institutions (e.g., schools and law) and the myriad of cultural products that populate people’s daily lives (e.g., advertisements, children’s books, songs, paintings; see Markus & Hamedani, Reference Markus, Hamedani, Kitayama and Cohen2007). Since the systems of meanings and practices are closely intertwined, people’s engagement in cultural practices affords, encourages and rewards specific psychological and behavioral tendencies that are in line with the cultural meaning system. While there is large variety in the – seemingly disorganized – ways in which people engage in cultural practices within any one culture, their feelings and behaviors as they, for instance, discuss conflict in a romantic relationship or navigate an institution like the school system, are rewarded in specific ways and organized around the culture’s system of meanings. This might help explain why, despite the tremendous variation in the extent to which people explicitly endorse a culture’s meanings, there is still a substantial amount of similarity in how they psychologically and behaviorally navigate the situations of their daily life (e.g., see Boiger et al., Reference Boiger, Ceulemans, De Leersnyder, Uchida, Norasakkunkit and Mesquita2018 for a nice illustration of this principle; see also Chapter 4, Uchida et al., this volume). As such, culture is not only situated “in the worlds” that people inhabit and create for one another, but also “in their heads,” such as in patterns of feeling, thinking and acting (Adams & Markus, Reference Adams, Markus, Schaller and Crandall2004; see Chapter 3, Cachia & Tsai, for a more elaborate description of the cultural cycle).

Given this definition, culture is not restricted to systems of meanings and practices that are shared by people who are living within the same national boundaries or share an ethnic group membership, which can be based on a shared nationality or region of origin, language, religion, tradition or history. Cultures are typically also created in other sociocultural groups that either share a specific structural condition (e.g., socioeconomic status [SES]), geographic reality (e.g., rural area, island), physical appearance upon which society constructs social categories and treats them (e.g., gender, race, age), a specific self-chosen interest (e.g., hip-hoppers, skaters, classical music fans), a particular ideological orientation (e.g., republican), or other groups with which people identify (e.g., Cohen & Varnum, Reference Cohen and Varnum2016; Plaut et al., Reference Plaut, Markus, Treadway and Fu2012; Stephens et al., Reference Stephens, Markus and Phillips2014; Vishkin et al., Reference Vishkin, Cohen and Kitayama2025). Even schools, workplaces, families and circles of friends are examples of cultures, albeit a “light version.” This implies that every individual is, in some form, multicultural: Everyone navigates multiple sociocultural groups and thus multiple systems of meanings and practices. Hence, when thinking and talking about an individual person, we should bear in mind that they navigate the world from a particular and perhaps unique intersection of multiple sociocultural contexts (e.g., country, social class, religion, gender) that comes with unique forms of privilege and oppression (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989). Nevertheless, it remains relevant to compare groups of people from larger sociocultural contexts, as some contexts – like one’s nation, SES or gender – are especially powerful in shaping the cultural institutions, products and practices that people engage in, and, as explained, these promote and reward specific psychological and behavioral tendencies.

To study different systems of meanings and practices as well as how they play out through people’s daily lives, scientists have summarized them in so-called cultural models (e.g., Holland & Quinn, Reference Holland and Quinn1987). The most widely studied cultural models that are often linked to cultural differences in emotion are those of self and relating (Markus & Kitayama, Reference Markus and Kitayama1991), which refer to what it means to be a “good person” and to have “good relationships.” Throughout the cultural psychological literature as well as throughout this book, two prototypes – those of independence and interdependence – have been used as a heuristic to illustrate how cultural contexts may differ from one another.

The independent model of self and relationships, most prevalent in Western European and North American middle-class contexts (Markus & Kitayama, Reference Markus and Kitayama1991; Stephens et al., Reference Stephens, Markus and Phillips2014), characterizes a good person as independent, in control, successful and unique, and considers good relationships as those in which each partner remains autonomous, self-reliant and high in self-esteem (Heine, Reference Heine, Murphy-Berman and Berman2003; Hochschild, Reference Hochschild and Hochschild1995; Kim & Markus, Reference Kim and Markus1999; Rothbaum et al., Reference Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake and Weisz2000; Triandis, Reference Triandis1995). This way of being and relating is often achieved (unconsciously) by focusing on both one’s own and one’s partners’ positive and unique traits, such as through complimenting and rewarding each other for various achievements (d’Andrade, Reference D’Andrade, Shweder and LeVine1984).

In contrast, the interdependent model, most prevalent (in some form) in East Asian and working-class contexts (Güngör et al., Reference Güngör, Karasawa, Boiger, Dinçer and Mesquita2014; Markus & Kitayama, Reference Markus and Kitayama1991; Stephens et al., Reference Stephens, Markus and Phillips2014), defines a good person as interdependent, adaptable to situations and focused on maintaining relational harmony, and considers good relationships as those that are characterized by mutual dependence, interconnectedness and adjusting to each other’s expectations (Heine, Reference Heine, Murphy-Berman and Berman2003; Kim & Markus, Reference Kim and Markus1999; Lebra, Reference Lebra and Rosenberger1992). This can be achieved by emphasizing either closeness or saving “face” (Boiger et al., Reference Boiger, Güngör, Karasawa and Mesquita2014; Güngör et al., Reference Güngör, Karasawa, Boiger, Dinçer and Mesquita2014; Kitayama, et al., Reference Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto and Norasakkunkit1997) and by being aware of one’s own shortcomings and the needs of others, practicing extensive politeness rules and engaging in moments of collective self-reflection (i.e., hansei; Lewis, Reference Lewis1995).

Of course, dichotomies always fall short in grappling the complex realities of everyday life and the cultural models of self and relating are no exception. Recent explorations of cultural models of the self and relating in Mediterranean cultural contexts (e.g., Uskul et al., Reference Uskul, Kirchner-Häusler, Vignoles, Rodriguez-Bailón, Castillo, Cross, Yalçın, Harb, Husnu, Ishii, Jin, Karamaouna, Kafetsios, Kateri, Matamoros-Lima, Liu, Miniesy, Na, Özkan and Uchida.2023), Arab (San Martin et al., Reference San Martin, Sinaceur, Madi, Thompson, Maddux and Kitayama2018) and African contexts (Kitayama, Reference Kitayama2024) as well as in Latin America (Salvador et al., Reference Salvador, Idrovo Carlier, Ishii, Torres Castillo, Nanakdewa, San Martin, Savani and Kitayama2024) and Southeast Asia (Panpothong & Phakdeephasook, Reference Panpothong and Phakdeephasook2023) have all revealed that the prevalent cultural models in these less well-studied contexts consist of different combinations or subforms of independence and interdependence that are in line with the specific cultures’ main values and concerns, such as those of honor or familism (Kitayama & Salvador, Reference Kitayama and Salvador2024; Kitayama et al., Reference Kitayama, Salvador, Nanakdewa, Rossmaier, San Martin and Savani2022). Yet, for the main purpose of some chapters in this book (e.g., Chapters 2–7), the prototypes of independence and interdependence can go a long way, because these cultural models help understand how cultural variation in emotion is meaningful and functional in light of the sociocultural context’s most valued and rewarded ways of being and relating.

Now, if emotions reflect our stances in the world and different groups of people tend to value different meanings as well as promote and sanction different ways of acting upon the world, we may expect that there is systematic cultural variation in emotion. If so, we may further investigate if the subjective experience of an emotion emerges from people’s interactions that unfold against the backdrop of larger cultural systems of meanings and practices and thus, if emoting is indeed a “contextualised construction of meaning” (Boiger, Reference Boiger2013, p. 6; see also Averill, Reference Averill, Plutchik and Kellerman1980; Barrett, Reference Barrett2006, Reference Barrett2009; Boiger & Mesquita, Reference Boiger and Mesquita2012; Mesquita, Reference Mesquita, Mesquita, Barrett and Smith2010; Russell, Reference Boiger and Mesquita2009). This book revolves around these themes and within each chapter you’ll find, from slightly different angles, some compelling empirical evidence that resonates with these ideas.

Yet, to fully grasp the theoretical and practical implications of the presented empirical evidence, I consider it important to sketch a brief history of the field of culture and emotion research. In the following section, I will therefore introduce the extreme positions of universalism and cultural relativism from which the intertwining of culture and emotion has been studied in the past. From there, I will describe how both the extreme points of universalism and constructionism can be reconciled – a challenge also taken up by Manokara and Sauter in Chapter 2 – and how this may help us move forward in the field.

1.2.1 Early Universalist and Social Constructionist Approaches

The question of whether emotions are universal or culture-specific became a central (and polarized) debate in scholarly works of the 1980s. Early universalist approaches were mostly advocated for by psychologists, such as Tomkins, Izard and Ekman, to name a few. They built on Darwin’s idea that emotions are evolutionary adaptive phenomena (Darwin, Reference Darwin1872; see Fridlund, Reference Fridlund and Strongman1992, and Barrett, Reference Barrett2017, for how Darwin has often been misrepresented) and aimed to empirically demonstrate that, for this reason, facial configurations of emotion are perceived and produced in similar ways across the globe. As further detailed in Chapter 2, the classic studies within this approach asked people from different cultural contexts to match pictures of facial configurations to emotion words or to produce an expression that matches a particular emotion word or story (e.g., Ekman & Friesen, Reference Ekman and Friesen1971; Ekman et al., Reference Ekman, Sorensen and Friesen1969). In both the recognition and production paradigms, six so-called basic emotions were investigated – anger, sadness, happiness, surprise, fear and disgust – and for each emotion, the researchers had agreed upon what a prototypical display would look like (Ekman, Reference Ekman and Cole1972; see also Izard, Reference Izard1971). In both Western literate and isolated non-Western preliterate cultural contexts, people “correctly” matched facial configurations and emotion words above chance level (>18 percent; Ekman et al., Reference Ekman, Sorensen and Friesen1969; Ekman & Friesen, Reference Ekman and Friesen1971; but see Nelson & Russell, Reference Nelson and Russell2013; Russell, Reference Russell1994; Russell & Fernández-Dols, Reference Russell and Fernández-Dols1997; and Chapter 2, Manokara & Sauter, this volume, for how methodological choices may have artificially inflated the percentage of “correct” matches).

These findings led scholars to conclude that these six “basic emotions” are universal and fueled “Basic Emotion Theories” that think of emotions as “affect programs” (Ekman, Reference Ekman1992, Reference Ekman, Dalgleish and Power1999): innate biological systems comprised of unique constellations of physiological responses, facial and vocal expressions, subjective experiences, appraisals and action tendencies. Within this framework, observed cultural differences in emotional displays are not taken as an indicator of a different “affect program” – “deep down” the emotion remains universal – but as the result of learned cultural display rules, which are cultural norms that dictate the modification and management of emotional expressions depending on the social circumstances (Ekman et al., Reference Ekman, Sorensen and Friesen1969; Matsumoto et al., Reference Matsumoto, Yoo, Fontaine, Anguas-Wong, Arriola, Ataca, Bond, Boratav, Breugelmans, Cabecinhas, Chae, Chin, Comunian, Degere, Djunaidi, Fok, Friedlmeier, Ghosh, Glamcevski and Granskaya2008). As such, within this research tradition, culture was relegated to the periphery of what an emotion is.

This view is in sharp contrast to the early social constructionist approaches that were developed by ethnographers, anthropologists, philosophers and linguists who claimed that emotions are essentially determined by cultural meaning systems (Abu-Lughod, Reference Abu-Lughod1986; Averill, Reference Averill, Plutchik and Kellerman1980; Harré, Reference Harré1986; Lutz, Reference Lutz1988; Rosaldo, Reference Rosaldo1980; see Mesquita, Reference Mesquita1993, for a similar description). Language is considered to play a key role in constructionist theories of psychological phenomena, so it may not surprise that, in its strongest form, social constructionism argued that emotion words or scripts are the primary drivers of emotion experience (e.g., Averill, Reference Averill1983; Harré, Reference Harré1986). Historical and anthropological studies that documented cultural variation in both emotion vocabulary and the use of emotion words – and especially the “untranslatability” of specific emotion words such as the Japanese “amae” – were considered important evidence for the culture specificity or even uniqueness of emotion experience (Morsbach & Tylor, Reference Morsbach, Tylor and Harré1986; but see Niiya et al., Reference Niiya, Ellsworth and Yamaguchi2006 and Chapter 4 by Uchida et al., for a more nuanced interpretation of these findings).

However, anthropologists, sociologists, and later also psychologists, came to adopt a weaker form of constructionism in which the cultural meanings attached to “primary affects” – that is, bodily sensations that unconsciously signal “that something new is required” (Levy, Reference Levy, Shweder and Levine1984, p. 402) – were thought to vary across cultures (Gerber, Reference Gerber, White and Kirkpatrick1985; Gordon, Reference Gordon, Rosenberg and Turne1981; Levy, Reference Levy1973, Reference Levy, Shweder and Levine1984). For instance, in her ethnography on the Ifaluk who live on a Pacific atoll, Lutz not only described how happiness was rather rare, but also explained that this “basic emotion” was viewed as potentially leading to a neglect of duties essential to the Ifaluk social life (Lutz, Reference Lutz, Quinn and Holland1987; see also the ethnographies of Abu-Lughod, Reference Abu-Lughod1986, on hasham (shame) and the one by Briggs, Reference Briggs1970, on anger among the Utku Inuit). Despite the lack of clarity on how cultural interpretations interplay with the “primary affects,” these forms of early social constructionist approaches emphasized the potential crucial role of culture, as encrypted in language, social scripts and cultural meanings, in shaping the particularities and functionalities of specific emotions within different cultural contexts.

1.2.2 First Attempts to Move On

The componential theories of emotion that were articulated by the early 1990s (e.g., Frijda, Reference Frijda1986; see also earlier in this chapter), provided a first opportunity to reconcile the different ideas on the interplay of culture and emotion. Rather than treating emotions as a monolithic construct that is rather unanalyzable (as both early universal and constructionist theories had done), componential theories allowed the emotion to be broken down into analyzable components, thereby shifting the question from whether or not emotions differ across cultures to the extent and ways they may do so (Mesquita, Reference Mesquita1993). Following the latter approach, Mesquita and Frijda (Reference Mesquita and Frijda1992) organized all available empirical evidence about the role of culture in emotions according to the componential model of emotions.

A first key takeaway from that review was that, for each component, both cultural similarities and differences could be identified. These often depended on the level of description, with similarities often occurring at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., the appraisal of self-blame is a constitutive element of “guilt” in many cultures) and with differences often popping up when describing a phenomenon at a very detailed level of analysis (e.g., the actual antecedent events associated with appraisals of self-blame differed across cultures; Lebra, Reference Lebra1983; Mesquita & Frijda, Reference Mesquita and Frijda1992). Extending this observation, Mesquita and colleagues (Reference Mesquita, Frijda, Scherer, Dasen and Saraswathi1997) submitted that whereas universalist approaches to emotion may have focused on “emotion potentials” – that is, people’s capacities (or constraints) of having specific emotion components – ethnographic approaches often focused on people’s “emotion practices” – that is, how they practice emotions in concrete situations throughout daily life (frequencies, intensities, specific constellation of components). In Chapter 2 of this book, Manokara and Sauter further extend these ideas by adopting the framework of different levels of universalism by Norenzayan and Heine (Reference Norenzayan and Heine2005) to systematically analyze cultural similarities and differences in different components of emotion.

A second takeaway of Mesquita and Frijda’s Reference Mesquita and Frijda1992 review was that universality in one component (e.g., facial expression) of a specific emotion (e.g., anger) did not preclude cultural differences in another component (e.g., appraisals). For instance, while people in both the United States and Japan paired “angry faces” with the word “anger,” Japanese associated “anger” less with the appraisals of “other blame” and “injustice” than did North Americans (Matsumoto et al., Reference Matsumoto, Kudoh, Scherer and Wallbott1988; Scherer et al., Reference Scherer, Wallbott, Matsumoto, Kudoh and Scherer1988). This insight is crucial because it warns against taking cultural similarities or differences in one emotion component as an indicator that there are similarities or differences in all other components (cf. infra). For instance, based on above-chance recognition rates of (posed) facial configurations associated with “anger,” one thus cannot conclude that “anger” – as an amalgam of antecedent events, appraisals, action tendencies, bodily changes and subjective experience – is universally the same. Likewise, based on linguistic particularities in one culture (e.g., the word amae), one cannot claim that there is no possible cultural similarity in other components associated with the emotion. Thus “global statements about cross-cultural universality of emotion, or about their cultural determination, are inappropriate” (Mesquita & Frijda, Reference Mesquita and Frijda1992, p. 198); universality or culture specificity should not be assumed based on evidence from one emotion component only, but should be the topic of empirical inquiry.

One last observation from that review still stands out today: The study of specific emotions is geared toward those emotions that are meaningful and central in the researcher’s own cultural context. Indeed, some of the so-called basic emotions, like “disgust,” are not considered so “basic” in other cultural contexts; the Polish linguist Anna Wierzbicka, for instance, pointed out that the Polish language does not even have a direct translation of the English word “disgust” (Reference Wierzbicka1986, p. 584). Even today, emotions like “indebtedness” and “shame” are underrepresented in the dominant literature on emotion and far from considered “basic,” despite being a central experience for people in the majority (non-WEIRD) world, whose daily life is often governed by closely knit social ties, rules, expectations and hierarchies. Also, the ways in which we think about emotions, and study them in our discipline, reflect Western middle-class ideas of emotions, namely as Mental processes occurring INside the person and having an Essence – the so-called MINE model of emotions (Mesquita, Reference Mesquita2022). This is in sharp contrast to how emotions are commonly conceptualized and experienced in other cultural contexts, according to an OURS model of emotions, that is, as emerging OUtside the person, in Relation to others and as Situated in a specific context (Mesquita, Reference Mesquita2022). Accordingly, university students and scholars in the (non-WEIRD) majority world often operate within scientific paradigms and literatures that are dominated by studies and findings based on people navigating a WEIRD intersection, even though these people only represent a small fraction of the world population. Nonetheless, findings based on these samples are frequently presented as reflecting the “default” functioning of the human mind (Arnett, Reference Arnett2008; Henrich et al., Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010). Let us be mindful about this when reading the remainder of this book as well as throughout our own research endeavors.

1.3.1 Part I: A Cultural Logic to Emotion

The first empirical part of this book consists of three chapters that all revolve around the question of whether there is cultural variation in emotion and on whether this variation is meaningful such that there is a “cultural logic” to how emotions are practiced across different sociocultural contexts. As a starting point, Kunalan Manokara and Disa Sauter (Chapter 2) explore the foundations from which cultural variability in emotion can emerge. They do so by adapting Norenzayan and Heine (Reference Norenzayan and Heine2005)’s hierarchical system of cultural universals into a theoretical framework to query degrees of universality (versus cultural variability) for different emotion components. They illustrate the usefulness of this approach by applying it to their review of the literature on two components of emotion: felt experience and nonverbal expression. As such, they create a common language and frame of reference that can further pave the way for fruitful discussions between scholars embedded in research traditions that have either focused predominantly on universal, or alternatively, culture-specific aspects of emotion.

In Chapter 3, Julie Cachia and Jeanne Tsai focus on how cultural variation in both the emotions that people desire (i.e., ideal affect) and actually experience is not arbitrary, but rather follows a “cultural logic.” Specifically, they show how at each level of the cultural cycle – that is, in individual behaviors, social interactions, institutional practices and broader cultural ideas (Hamedani & Markus, Reference Hamedani and Markus2019) – people’s emotions tend to be aligned with the interpersonal goals and focus that help realize their culture’s mandate for independence or interdependence Emotions that are in line with culturally valued meanings and practices are those that are most desired, most commonly experienced and most strongly associated with various indicators of well-being and health. As such, Cachia and Tsai’s review of the empirical literature supports the idea that emotions may be the “most proximate or experience-near carrier of cultural imperatives or assumptions about what constitutes the self, others, and the relationship between the two” (Markus & Kitayama, Reference Markus, Kitayama, Kitayama and Markus1994, p. 100).

Moving beyond the frequencies and intensities of emotional experiences, Chapter 4 continues to explore if there is a cultural logic to the content of emotions. Specifically, Yukiko Uchida, Kuba Krys and Kongmeng Liew link cultural models of agency (i.e., how people act upon the world, which is associated with but does not overlap with cultural models of self; Markus & Kitayama, Reference Markus, Kitayama, Berman and Berman2004) to different emotional conceptualizations While conceptualizations of emotion as originating from within the individual reflect a disjoint model of agency, conceptualizations of emotion as emerging from social interactions reflect a conjoint model of agency. From here, the authors then convincingly show how experiences of “happiness,” “anger” and “awe” can be associated with slightly different appraisal patterns across different cultural contexts, implying that the “same” emotion may come in different variants. In the final part of this chapter, the authors showcase how the Natural Semantic Metalanguage research approach holds potential to identify both likely universal and highly culturally specific aspects of the content of emotion.

1.3.2 Part II: How Cultural Differences in Emotions Come About

Capitalizing on our understanding of cultural variation in emotion, as well as on the different frameworks to make sense of this variation (all in Part I), the second part of this book explores various processes, mechanisms and pathways that can bring about this meaningful cultural variation. In Chapter 5, Yulia Chentsova Dutton, Jake Winter, Jinli Wu and Andrew Ryder argue that culture not only shapes the bottom-up patterning of emotional experiences and symptoms associated with distress, but also the top-down categories of emotions and emotional distress that are salient to both clinicians and laypeople and that are readily applied to people’s experiences. By examining the dynamic interplay between bottom-up and top-down processes, we can gain deeper insight into how culture shapes mental illness – and why it is essential to move beyond Western-centric emotional and mental health categories that are too often presumed to be universal and self-evident.

In Chapter 6, Yuri Miyamoto, Maya Tamir and Jeong Ha (Steph) Choi examine another important route through which cultural meaning systems may shape individuals’ emotions: emotion regulation – that is, the (often deliberate) process by which people try to influence or change the emotions that they themselves (or others) experience or express (Gross, Reference Gross1998). The authors convincingly show how there may be cultural differences in at least three key aspects of emotion regulation, namely in: (1) what people want to feel (i.e., emotion goals); (2) how people try to change their emotions (i.e., emotion regulation strategies); and (3) which emotions people pay attention to and are thus the focus of regulation (or not). As such, they highlight cultural variation in both the start and (desired) end-states of emotion regulation as well as in the routes taken to get there. For each aspect, the authors also outline how engaging in culturally valued ways of regulating emotions is associated with better well-being and mental health, whereas engaging in devalued ways of regulating emotions tends to be associated with poorer well-being and health. As such, emotion regulation processes seem to play a key role in aligning people’s emotions with their cultural context’s meanings and practices as well as in their physical and psychological well-being.

However, people not only (deliberately or unconsciously) shape their own emotions, but also those of their interaction partners. Building on the premise that emotions are geared toward relationship goals – and that these goals differ across cultures (see also earlier in this chapter) – Chapter 7 argues that the emotions that arise and unfold during romantic couples’ interactions also differ in culturally meaningful ways. Specifically, Anna Schouten, Michael Boiger, Alexander Kirchner-Häusler and Batja Mesquita present a review of the literature, as well as of their own observational lab studies on couples in conflict interactions, to explore how cultural ideals for “good” relationships shape which emotions are felt and expressed, how partners respond to each other’s emotions, and how they regulate both their own and the other’s emotions to support those (cultural) relationship ideals. Echoing other chapters, the authors present evidence suggesting that this “cultural dance” between partners (during conflict) is functional, because couples report being most satisfied with their relationship when their emotions align with culturally valued relationship goals. Taken together, the chapter highlights that emotions do not merely emerge from but rather constitute and shape our everyday interactions. These interactions in turn unfold against a rich environment of cultural meanings and practices, rendering some emotions more likely than others. Importantly, the social construction of emotions is a dynamic and iterative process, by which interaction partners continuously, by “emoting” together, negotiate and enact cultural values and norms, (re)shaping culture.

1.3.3 Part III: Emotion Dynamics in Multicultural Societies

In Part III of this book, we investigate the dynamics of culture and emotion as they unfold in multicultural societies. Anno 2025, about one third of citizens in Western Europe, North America or Australia has an ethnic minoritized cultural background (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2025; Eurostat, 2024; US Census Bureau, 2024), meaning that either they themselves or their (grand)parents migrated to one of these countries (e.g., think about the >5 million people of Turkish origin living in Western Europe; Guveli et al., Reference Guveli, Ganzeboom, Platt, Nauck, Baykara-Krumme, Eroğlu, Bayrakdar, Sözeri and Spierings2016) or that their Indigenous or historically migrated ethnic group has been enslaved, colonized or oppressed by these nations in the past (e.g., think about the Māori in New Zealand or African Americans in the US). Since different ethnic groups may embrace different systems of meanings and practices, it is reasonable to expect that when people with different cultural backgrounds engage in continuous contact with another cultural group, their emotions may change – a process that is called emotional acculturation and that is described in detail in Chapter 8 by Alba Jasini, Jozefien De Leersnyder, Heejung Kim and Batja Mesquita. Specifically, this chapter documents how immigrant minorities’ social contacts with members of the ethnic majority group in their new context changes their emotional patterns to come to resemble those that are typical for the ethnic majority group; a process that may be bidirectional such that majorities also change toward minorities’ typical patterns of emotions. Interestingly, immigrant minorities’ emotional fit with the new ethnic majority culture does not necessarily jeopardize fit with their heritage culture, indicating that different emotional repertoires can coexist, with some immigrant minorities being able to smoothly switch between the two depending on the context. This first chapter on emotion dynamics thus suggests that: (1) emotions are socialized well beyond childhood; (2) emotions are contingent on the specific cultural meanings that are salient in people’s (changing) cultural context; and (3) people in multicultural societies negotiate the meanings they ascribe to daily situations and, as such, reshape (each other’s as well their shared) culture.

These insights are echoed throughout Chapter 9 by Pernelle Lorette and Jean-Marc Dewaele, who describe the intriguing yet complex interplay between culture, emotion and language. Specifically, they shed light on dynamics in both emotional experience and communication by reviewing how multilingual individuals navigate multiple languages and, often, multiple cultures. A crucial insight from their review of linguistic and psychological studies is that multilinguals’ emotional life is profoundly impacted by their different languages since the acquisition of words and connotations in the new language may change those in one’s first language, implying that not only emotional patterns, but also emotion concepts, can come to change. Again, these findings suggest emotion development and change upon changing cultural and linguistic experiences and knowledge.

Shifting perspective from how cultural interactions shape (micro-level) individual and interpersonal dynamics in emotional experience and communication, Chapter 10 focuses on how emotions and (longer-living) sentiments co-shape (macro-level) relations between and within different sociocultural groups. Specifically, Agneta Fischer and Bertjan Doosje focus on group-based emotions – that is, emotions that are elicited by group concerns when we self-categorize and identify with that particular group – in multicultural societies. These group-based emotions can either help promote positive bonds between different sociocultural groups or nurture violent outbursts, for instance when they include feelings of contempt, hate or moral disgust for the other group. This literature review is highly relevant since it not only sheds light on how intergroup conflicts emerge, but also on how negative emotion cycles in intergroup relations can be diminished and how empathy for other groups can be (re)established. Understanding these processes may be highly relevant to help us understand and potentially mitigate some of today’s most disturbing intergroup contexts, such as the violent oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state, the war against Ukraine by the Russian state, the many ethnic conflicts on the African continent (e.g., in Sudan) and the myriad of ways in which refugees and migrants are increasingly dehumanized in the US and Europe.

Finally, Chapter 11 by Yoshihisa Kashima, Emiko Kashima and Simon Laham presents an intriguing account of the role emotions may play in larger societal and cultural dynamics. Drawing on the insights that both culture and emotion provide people with informational resources to adapt to their (changing) circumstances, the authors speculate on the role that emotions may play in micro-to-macro cultural dynamics – that is, how changes in individuals and interactions may give rise to larger-scale cultural changes – under societal threats, such as the past COVID-19 pandemic or the ongoing warming of our planet. When these social threats are recurring – which they are if governors don’t invest in vaccines or ban fossil fuels – and enough people come to experience and express certain emotions in response to these events, then the meanings of these events, the cultural scripts to cope with them and the associated discourse in society can be rewritten. What this chapter’s analysis thus puts forward is that, at least under societal threat but maybe also beyond those circumstances, “emotions may be powerful tools to re-negotiate societal meanings and practices; they are key to changing culture” (Chapter 11, Kashima et al., this volume, p. 272). And this brings us full circle to the mutual constitution of culture and emotion. Whereas Part I of this book highlighted how culture shapes emotions, the final chapters of this book in Part III highlight how emotions can in turn shape cultures.