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2. Culture and Emotion

Culture and Emotion

By Jeanne Tsai
Stanford University
How do people’s cultural ideas and practices shape their emotions (and other types of feelings)?
In this module, we will discuss findings from studies comparing North American (United States,
Canada) and East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) contexts. These studies reveal both
cultural similarities and differences in various aspects of emotional life. Throughout, we will
highlight the scientific and practical importance of these findings and conclude with
recommendations for future research.
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Culture and Emotion
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● Collectivism
● Culture
● Emotion
● ethnicity
● facial expression
 ● Happiness
● ideal affect
● Individualism
● Self
● well-being

Learning Objectives
● Review the history of cross-cultural studies of emotion
● Learn about recent empirical findings and theories of culture and emotion
● Understand why cultural differences in emotion matter
● Explore current and future directions in culture and emotion research
Take a moment and imagine you are traveling in a country you’ve never been to before.
Everything—the sights, the smells, the sounds—seems strange. People are speaking a
language you don’t understand and wearing clothes unlike yours. But they greet you with a
smile and you sense that, despite the differences you observe, deep down inside these people
have the same feelings as you. But is this true? Do people from opposite ends of the world
really feel the same emotions? While most scholars agree that members of different cultures
may vary in the foods they eat, the languages they speak, and the holidays they celebrate, there
is disagreement about the extent to which culture shapes people’s emotions and
feelings—including what people feel, what they express, and what they do during an emotional
event. Understanding how culture shapes people’s emotional lives and what impact emotion has
on psychological health and well-being in different cultures will not only advance the study of
human behavior but will also benefit multicultural societies. Across a variety of
settings—academic, business, medical—people worldwide are coming into more contact with
people from foreign cultures. In order to communicate and function effectively in such situations,
we must understand the ways cultural ideas and practices shape our emotions.

Historical Background
In the 1950s and 1960s, social scientists tended to fall into either one of two camps. The
universalist camp claimed that, despite cultural differences in customs and traditions, at a
fundamental level all humans feel similarly. These universalists believed that emotions evolved
as a response to the environments of our primordial ancestors, so they are the same across all
cultures. Indeed, people often describe their emotions as “automatic,” “natural,” “physiological,”
and “instinctual,” supporting the view that emotions are hard-wired and universal.
Universalists point to our prehistoric ancestors as the source of emotions that all humans share.
[Image: Stefan Sheer, https://goo.gl/x56mw9, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://goo.gl/tCiqlm]
The social constructivist camp, however, claimed that despite a common evolutionary heritage,
different groups of humans evolved to adapt to their distinctive environments. And because
human environments vary so widely, people’s emotions are also culturally variable. For
instance, Lutz (1988) argued that many Western views of emotion assume that emotions are
“singular events situated within individuals.” However, people from Ifaluk (a small island near
Micronesia) view emotions as “exchanges between individuals” (p. 212). Social constructivists
contended that because cultural ideas and practices are all-encompassing, people are often
unaware of how their feelings are shaped by their culture. Therefore emotions can feel
automatic, natural, physiological, and instinctual, and yet still be primarily culturally shaped.
In the 1970s, Paul Ekman conducted one of the first scientific studies to address the
universalist–social constructivist debate. He and Wallace Friesen devised a system to measure
people’s facial muscle activity, called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman &
Friesen, 1978). Using FACS, Ekman and Friesen analyzed people’s facial expressions and
identified specific facial muscle configurations associated with specific emotions, such as
happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust. Ekman and Friesen then took photos of people posing
with these different expressions (Figure 1). With the help of colleagues at different universities
around the world, Ekman and Friesen showed these pictures to members of vastly different
cultures, gave them a list of emotion words (translated into the relevant languages), and asked
them to match the facial expressions in the photos with their corresponding emotion words on
the list (Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Ekman et al., 1987).
Across cultures, participants “recognized” the emotional facial expressions, matching each
picture with its “correct” emotion word at levels greater than chance. This led Ekman and his
colleagues to conclude that there are universally recognized emotional facial expressions. At
the same time, though, they found considerable variability across cultures in recognition rates.
For instance, whereas 95% of U.S. participants associated a smile with “happiness,” only 69%
of Sumatran participants did. Similarly, 86% of U.S. participants associated wrinkling of the nose
with “disgust,” but only 60% of Japanese did (Ekman et al., 1987). Ekman and colleagues
interpreted this variation as demonstrating cultural differences in “display rules,” or rules about
what emotions are appropriate to show in a given situation (Ekman, 1972). Indeed, since this
initial work, Matsumoto and his colleagues have demonstrated widespread cultural differences
in display rules (Safdar et al., 2009). One prominent example of such differences is biting one’s
tongue. In India, this signals embarrassment; however, in the U.S. this expression has no such
meaning (Haidt & Keltner, 1999).
Figure 1. Facial expressions associated with happiness, sadness, disgust, and anger based on
the Facial Action Coding System. [Image: Paul Eckman, used with permission]
These findings suggest both cultural similarities and differences in the recognition of emotional
facial expressions (although see Russell, 1994, for criticism of this work). Interestingly, since the
mid-2000s, increasing research has demonstrated cultural differences not only in display rules,
but also the degree to which people focus on the face (versus other aspects of the social
context; Masuda, Ellsworth, Mesquita, Leu, Tanida, & Van de Veerdonk, 2008), and on different
features of the face (Yuki, Maddux, & Matsuda, 2007) when perceiving others’ emotions. For
example, people from the United States tend to focus on the mouth when interpreting others’
emotions, whereas people from Japan tend to focus on the eyes.
But how does culture shape other aspects of emotional life—such as how people emotionally
respond to different situations, how they want to feel generally, and what makes them happy?
Today, most scholars agree that emotions and other related states are multifaceted, and that
cultural similarities and differences exist for each facet. Thus, rather than classifying emotions
as either universal or socially-constructed, scholars are now attempting to identify the specific
similarities and differences of emotional life across cultures. These endeavors are yielding new
insights into the effects of cultural on emotion.

Current and Research Theory

Given the wide range of cultures and facets of emotion in the world, for the remainder of the
module we will limit our scope to the two cultural contexts that have received the most empirical
attention by social scientists: North America (United States, Canada) and East Asia (China,
Japan, and Korea). Social scientists have focused on North American and East Asian contexts
because they differ in obvious ways, including their geographical locations, histories, languages,
and religions. Moreover, since the 1980s large-scale studies have revealed that North American
and East Asian contexts differ in their overall values and attitudes, such as the prioritization of
personal vs. group needs (individualism vs. collectivism; Hofstede, 2001). Whereas North
American contexts encourage members to prioritize personal over group needs (to be
“individualistic”), East Asian contexts encourage members to prioritize group over personal
needs (to be “collectivistic”).

Cultural Models of Self in North

American and East Asian Contexts
In a landmark paper, cultural psychologists Markus and Kitayama (1991) proposed that
previously observed differences in individualism and collectivism translated into different models
of the self—or one’s personal concept of who s/he is as a person. Specifically, the researchers
argued that in North American contexts, the dominant model of the self is an independent one,
in which being a person means being distinct from others and behaving accordingly across
situations. In East Asian contexts, however, the dominant model of the self is an interdependent
one, in which being a person means being fundamentally connected to others and being
responsive to situational demands. For example, in a classic study (Cousins, 1989), American
and Japanese students were administered the Twenty Statements Test, in which they were
asked to complete the sentence stem, “I am ______,” twenty times. U.S. participants were more
likely than Japanese participants to complete the stem with psychological attributes (e.g.,
friendly, cheerful); Japanese participants, on the other hand, were more likely to complete the
stem with references to social roles and responsibilities (e.g., a daughter, a student) (Cousins,
1989). These different models of the self result in different principles for interacting with others.
An independent model of self teaches people to express themselves and try to influence others
(i.e., change their environments to be consistent with their own beliefs and desires). In contrast,
an interdependent model of self teaches people to suppress their own beliefs and desires and
adjust to others’ (i.e., fit in with their environment) (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999;
Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984). Markus and
Kitayama (1991) argue that these different models of self have significant implications for how
people in Western and East Asian contexts feel.

Cultural Similarities and Differences in

Emotion: Comparisons of North
American and East Asian Contexts
A considerable body of empirical research suggests that these different models of self shape
various aspects of emotional dynamics. Next we will discuss several ways culture shapes
emotion, starting with emotional response.
People’s Physiological Responses to Emotional
Events Are Similar Across Cultures, but Culture
Influences People’s Facial Expressive Behavior
Although study participants from different cultural backgrounds reported similar emotions and
levels of intensity when recalling important episodes in their lives, there were significant
differences in facial expressions in response to those emotions. [Image: Andrew Sweeney,
https://goo.gl/Npc7Wm, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/H2QaA8]
How does culture influence people’s responses to emotional events? Studies of emotional
response tend to focus on three components: physiology (e.g., how fast one’s heart beats),
subjective experience (e.g., feeling intensely happy or sad), and facial expressive behavior
(e.g., smiling or frowning). Although only a few studies have simultaneously measured these
different aspects of emotional response, those that do tend to observe more similarities than
differences in physiological responses between cultures. That is, regardless of culture, people
tend to respond similarly in terms of physiological (or bodily) expression. For instance, in one
study, European American and Hmong (pronounced “muhng”) American participants were
asked to relive various emotional episodes in their lives (e.g., when they lost something or
someone they loved; when something good happened) (Tsai, Chentsova-Dutton,
Freire-Bebeau, & Przymus, 2002). At the level of physiological arousal (e.g., heart rate), there
were no differences in how the participants responded. However, their facial expressive
behavior told a different story. When reliving events that elicited happiness, pride, and love,
European Americans smiled more frequently and more intensely than did their Hmong
counterparts—though all participants reported feeling happy, proud, and in love at similar levels
of intensity. And similar patterns have emerged in studies comparing European Americans with
Chinese Americans during different emotion-eliciting tasks (Tsai et al., 2002; Tsai, Levenson, &
McCoy, 2006; Tsai, Levenson, & Carstensen, 2000). Thus, while the physiological aspects of
emotional responses appear to be similar across cultures, their accompanying facial
expressions are more culturally distinctive.
Again, these differences in facial expressions during positive emotional events are consistent
with findings from cross-cultural studies of display rules, and stem from the models of
self-description discussed above: In North American contexts that promote an independent self ,
individuals tend to express their emotions to influence others. Conversely, in East Asian
contexts that promote an interdependent self, individuals tend to control and suppress their
emotions to adjust to others.

People Suppress Their Emotions Across Cultures, but

Culture Influences the Consequences of Suppression
for Psychological Well-Being
If the cultural ideal in North American contexts is to express oneself, then suppressing emotions
(not showing how one feels) should have negative consequences. This is the assumption
underlying hydraulic models of emotion: the idea that emotional suppression and repression
impair psychological functioning (Freud, 1910). Indeed, significant empirical research shows
that suppressing emotions can have negative consequences for psychological well-being in
North American contexts (Gross, 1998). However, Soto and colleagues (2011) find that the
relationship between suppression and psychological well-being varies by culture. True, with
European Americans, emotional suppression is associated with higher levels of depression and
lower levels of life satisfaction. (Remember, in these individualistic societies, the expression of
emotion is a fundamental aspect of positive interactions with others.) On the other hand, since
for Hong Kong Chinese, emotional suppression is needed to adjust to others (in this
interdependent community, suppressing emotions is how to appropriately interact with others), it
is simply a part of normal life and therefore not associated with depression or life satisfaction.
These findings are consistent with research suggesting that factors related to clinical depression
vary between European Americans and Asian Americans. European Americans diagnosed with
depression show dampened or muted emotional responses (Bylsma, Morris, & Rottenberg,
2008). For instance, when shown sad or amusing film clips, depressed European Americans
respond less intensely than their nondepressed counterparts.However, other studies have
shown that depressed East Asian Americans (i.e., people of East Asian descent who live in the
United States) demonstrate similar or increased emotional responses compared with their
nondepressed counterparts (Chentsova-Dutton et al., 2007; Chentsova-Dutton, Tsai, & Gotlib,
2010). In other words, depressed European Americans show reduced emotional expressions,
but depressed East Asian Americans do not—and, in fact, may express more emotion. Thus,
muted responses (which resemble suppression) are associated with depression in European
American contexts, but not in East Asian contexts.

People Feel Good During Positive Events, but Culture

Influences Whether People Feel Bad During Positive
Events
Someone from a collectivist culture is more likely to think about how their own accomplishments
might impact others. An otherwise positive achievement for one person could cause another to
feel something negative, with mixed emotions as the result. [Image: lian xiaoxiao,
https://goo.gl/js5jDw, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]
What about people’s subjective emotional experiences? Do people across cultures feel the
same emotions in similar situations, despite how they show them? Recent studies indicate that
culture affects whether people are likely to feel bad during good events. In North American
contexts, people rarely feel bad after good experiences. However, a number of research teams
have observed that, compared with people in North American contexts, people in East Asian
contexts are more likely to feel bad and good (“mixed” emotions) during positive events (e.g.,
feeling worried after winning an important competition; Miyamoto, Uchida, & Ellsworth, 2010).
This may be because, compared with North Americans, East Asians engage in more dialectical
thinking (i.e., they are more tolerant of contradiction and change). Therefore, they accept that
positive and negative feelings can occur simultaneously. In addition, whereas North Americans
value maximizing positive states and minimizing negative ones, East Asians value a greater
balance between the two (Sims, Tsai, Wang, Fung, & Zhang, 2013). To better understand this,
think about how you would feel after getting the top score on a test that’s graded on a curve. In
North American contexts, such success is considered an individual achievement and worth
celebrating. But what about the other students who will now receive a lower grade because you
“raised the curve” with your good grade? In East Asian contexts, not only would students be
more thoughtful of the overall group’s success, but they would also be more comfortable
acknowledging both the positive (their own success on the test) and the negative (their
classmates’ lower grades).
Again, these differences can be linked to cultural differences in models of the self. An
interdependent model encourages people to think about how their accomplishments might affect
others (e.g., make others feel bad or jealous). Thus, awareness of negative emotions during
positive events may discourage people from expressing their excitement and standing out (as in
East Asian contexts). Such emotional suppression helps individuals feel in sync with those
around them. An independent model, however, encourages people to express themselves and
stand out, so when something good happens, they have no reason to feel bad.
So far, we have reviewed research that demonstrates cultural similarities in physiological
responses and in the ability to suppress emotions. We have also discussed the cultural
differences in facial expressive behavior and the likelihood of experiencing negative feelings
during positive events. Next, we will explore how culture shapes people’s ideal or desired states.

People Want to Feel Good Across Cultures, but

Culture Influences the Specific Good States People
Want to Feel (Their “Ideal Affect”)
Everyone welcomes positive feelings, but cultures vary in the specific types of positive affective
states (see Figure 2) their people favor. An affective state is essentially the type of emotional
arousal one feels coupled with its intensity—which can vary from pleasant to unpleasant (e.g.,
happy to sad), with high to low arousal (e.g., energetic to passive). Although people of all
cultures experience this range of affective states, they can vary in their preferences for each.
For example, people in North American contexts lean toward feeling excited, enthusiastic,
energetic, and other “high arousal positive” states. People in East Asian contexts, however,
generally prefer feeling calm, peaceful, and other “low arousal positive” states (Tsai, Knutson, &
Fung, 2006). These cultural differences have been observed in young children between the
ages of 3 and 5, college students, and adults between the ages of 60 and 80 (Tsai, Louie, Chen,
& Uchida, 2007; Tsai, Sims, Thomas, & Fung, 2013), and are reflected in widely-distributed
cultural products. For example, wherever you look in American contexts—women’s magazines,
children’s storybooks, company websites, and even Facebook profiles (Figure 3)—you will find
more open, excited smiles and fewer closed, calm smiles compared to Chinese contexts (Chim,
Moon, Ang, Tsai, 2013; Tsai, 2007;Tsai, Louie, et al., 2007).
Figure 2: Adapted from Feldman, Barrett, and Russell (1999); Larsen and Diener ((1992);
Russell (1991); Thayer (1989); Watson and Tellegen (1985)
Again, these differences in ideal affect (i.e., the emotional states that people believe are best)
correspond to the independent and interdependent models described earlier: Independent
selves want to influence others, which requires action (doing something), and action involves
high arousal states. Conversely, interdependent selves want to adjust to others, which requires
suspending action and attending to others—both of which involve low arousal states. Thus, the
more that individuals and cultures want to influence others (as in North American contexts), the
more they value excitement, enthusiasm, and other high arousal positive states. And, the more
that individuals and cultures want to adjust to others (as in East Asian contexts), the more they
value calm, peacefulness, and other low arousal positive states (Tsai, Miao, Seppala, Fung, &
Yeung, 2007).
Figure 3: Sample Hong Kong Chinese (left) and European American (right) Facebook pages.
Because one’s ideal affect functions as a guide for behavior and a way of evaluating one’s
emotional states, cultural differences in ideal affect can result in different emotional lives. For
example, several studies have shown that people engage in activities (e.g., recreational
pastimes, musical styles) consistent with their cultural ideal affect. That is, people from North
American contexts (who value high arousal affective states) tend to prefer thrilling activities like
skydiving, whereas people from East Asian contexts (who value low arousal affective states)
prefer tranquil activities like lounging on the beach (Tsai, 2007). In addition, people base their
conceptions of well-being and happiness on their ideal affect. Therefore, European Americans
are more likely to define well-being in terms of excitement, whereas Hong Kong Chinese are
more likely to define well-being in terms of calmness. Indeed, among European Americans, the
less people experience high arousal positive states, the more depressed they are. But, among
Hong Kong Chinese—you guessed it!—the less people experience low arousal positive states,
the more depressed they are (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006).

People Base Their Happiness on Similar Factors

Across Cultures, but Culture Influences the Weight
Placed on Each Factor
Research has shown that self-esteem is more highly correlated with life satisfaction in
individualistic cultures than in collectivist cultures. [Image: Erik, https://goo.gl/N8zccv, CC
BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]
What factors make people happy or satisfied with their lives? We have seen that discrepancies
between how people actually feel (actual affect) and how they want to feel (ideal affect)—as well
as people’s suppression of their ideal affect—are associated with depression. But happiness is
based on other factors as well. For instance, Kwan, Bond, & Singelis (1997) found that while
European Americans and Hong Kong Chinese subjects both based life satisfaction on how they
felt about themselves (self-esteem) and their relationships (relationship harmony), their
weighting of each factor was different. That is, European Americans based their life satisfaction
primarily on self-esteem, whereas Hong Kong Chinese based their life satisfaction equally on
self-esteem and relationship harmony. Consistent with these findings, Oishi and colleagues
(1999) found in a study of 39 nations that self-esteem was more strongly correlated with life
satisfaction in more individualistic nations compared to more collectivistic ones. Researchers
also found that in individualistic cultures people rated life satisfaction based on their emotions
more so than on social definitions (or norms). In other words, rather than using social norms as
a guideline for what constitutes an ideal life, people in individualistic cultures tend to evaluate
their satisfaction according to how they feel emotionally. In collectivistic cultures, however,
people’s life satisfaction tends to be based on a balance between their emotions and norms
(Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998). Similarly, other researchers have recently found that
people in North American contexts are more likely to feel negative when they have poor mental
and physical health, while people in Japanese contexts don’t have this association (Curhan et
al., 2013).
Again, these findings are consistent with cultural differences in models of the self. In North
American, independent contexts, feelings about the self matter more, whereas in East Asian,
interdependent contexts, feelings about others matter as much as or even more than feelings
about the self.
Why Do Cultural Similarities And
Differences In Emotion Matter?
Understanding cultural similarities and differences in emotion is obviously critical to
understanding emotions in general, and the flexibility of emotional processes more specifically.
Given the central role that emotions play in our interaction, understanding cultural similarities
and differences is especially critical to preventing potentially harmful miscommunications.
Although misunderstandings are unintentional, they can result in negative consequences—as
we’ve seen historically for ethnic minorities in many cultures. For instance, across a variety of
North American settings, Asian Americans are often characterized as too “quiet” and “reserved,”
and these low arousal states are often misinterpreted as expressions of disengagement or
boredom—rather than expressions of the ideal of calmness. Consequently, Asian Americans
may be perceived as “cold,” “stoic,” and “unfriendly,” fostering stereotypes of Asian Americans
as “perpetual foreigners” (Cheryan & Monin, 2005). Indeed, this may be one reason Asian
Americans are often overlooked for top leadership positions (Hyun, 2005).
In addition to averting cultural miscommunications, recognizing cultural similarities and
differences in emotion may provide insights into other paths to psychological health and
well-being. For instance, findings from a recent series of studies suggest that calm states are
easier to elicit than excited states, suggesting that one way of increasing happiness in cultures
that value excitement may be to increase the value placed on calm states (Chim, Tsai, Hogan, &
Fung, 2013).

Current Directions In Culture And

Emotion Research
What About Other Cultures?
In this brief review, we’ve focused primarily on comparisons between North American and East
Asian contexts because most of the research in cultural psychology has focused on these
comparisons. However, there are obviously a multitude of other cultural contexts in which
emotional differences likely exist. For example, although Western contexts are similar in many
ways, specific Western contexts (e.g., American vs. German) also differ from each other in
substantive ways related to emotion (Koopmann-Holm & Matsumoto, 2011). Thus, future
research examining other cultural contexts is needed. Such studies may also reveal additional,
uninvestigated dimensions or models that have broad implications for emotion. In addition,
because more and more people are being raised within multiple cultural contexts (e.g., for many
Chinese Americans, a Chinese immigrant culture at home and mainstream American culture at
school), more research is needed to examine how people negotiate and integrate these different
cultures in their emotional lives (for examples, see De Leersnyder, Mesquita, & Kim, 2011;
Perunovic, Heller, & Rafaeli, 2007).

How Are Cultural Differences in Beliefs About

Emotion Transmitted?
Children's story books offer one interesting and effective way to study how early influences can
impact a person's ideal affect. [Image: Vernon Barford School Library, https://goo.gl/fghcae, CC
BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]
According to Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), cultural ideas are reflected in and reinforced by
practices, institutions, and products. As an example of this phenomenon—and illustrating the
point regarding cultural differences in ideal affect—bestselling children’s storybooks in the
United States often contain more exciting and less calm content (smiles and activities) than do
bestselling children’s storybooks in Taiwan (Tsai, Louie, et al., 2007). To investigate this further,
the researchers randomly assigned European American, Asian American, and Taiwanese
Chinese preschoolers to be read either stories with exciting content or stories with calm content.
Across all of these cultures, the kids who were read stories with exciting content were afterward
more likely to value excited states, whereas those who were read stories with calm content were
more likely to value calm states. As a test, after hearing the stories, the kids were shown a list of
toys and asked to select their favorites. Those who heard the exciting stories wanted to play
with more arousing toys (like a drum that beats loud and fast), whereas those who heard the
calm stories wanted to play with less arousing toys (like a drum that beats quiet and slow).
These findings suggest that regardless of ethnic background, direct exposure to storybook
content alters children’s ideal affect. More studies are needed to assess whether a similar
process occurs when children and adults are chronically exposed to various types of cultural
products. As well, future studies should examine other ways cultural ideas regarding emotion
are transmitted (e.g., via interactions with parents and teachers).

Could These Cultural Differences Be Due to

Temperament?
An alternative explanation for cultural differences in emotion is that they are due to
temperamental factors—that is, biological predispositions to respond in certain ways. (Might
European Americans just be more emotional than East Asians because of genetics?) Indeed,
most models of emotion acknowledge that both culture and temperament play roles in emotional
life, yet few if any models indicate how. Nevertheless, most researchers believe that despite
genetic differences in founder populations (i.e., the migrants from a population who leave to
create their own societies), culture has a greater impact on emotions. For instance, one
theoretical framework, Affect Valuation Theory, proposes that cultural factors shape how people
want to feel (“ideal affect”) more than how they actually feel (“actual affect”); conversely,
temperamental factors influence how people actually feel more than how they want to feel (Tsai,
2007) (see Figure 4).
To test this hypothesis, European American, Asian American, and Hong Kong Chinese
participants completed measures of temperament (i.e., stable dispositions, such as neuroticism
or extraversion), actual affect (i.e., how people actually feel in given situations), ideal affect (i.e.,
how people would like to feel in given situations), and influential cultural values (i.e., personal
beliefs transmitted through culture). When researchers analyzed the participants’ responses,
they found that differences in ideal affect between cultures were associated more with cultural
factors than with temperamental factors (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). However, when
researchers examined actual affect, they found this to be reversed: actual affect was more
strongly associated with temperamental factors than cultural factors. Not all of the studies
described above have ruled out a temperamental explanation, though, and more studies are
needed to rule out the possibility that the observed group differences are due to genetic factors
instead of, or in addition to, cultural factors. Moreover, future studies should examine whether
the links between temperament and emotions might vary across cultures, and how cultural and
temperamental factors work together to shape emotion.

Figure 4: Affect valuation theory. Thicker

lines indicate stronger predicted
relationships.
Summary

Based on studies comparing North American and East Asian contexts, there is clear evidence
for cultural similarities and differences in emotions, and most of the differences can be traced to
different cultural models of the self.
Consider your own concept of self for a moment. What kinds of pastimes do you
prefer—activities that make you excited, or ones that make you calm? What kinds of feelings do
you strive for? What is your ideal affect? Because emotions seem and feel so instinctual to us,
it’s hard to imagine that the way we experience them and the ones we desire are anything other
than biologically programmed into us. However, as current research has shown (and as future
research will continue to explore), there are myriad ways in which culture, both consciously and
unconsciously, shapes people’s emotional lives.

Outside Resources
Audio Interview: The Really Big Questions “What Are Emotions?” Interview with Paul Ekman,
Martha Nussbaum, Dominique Moisi, and William
Reddyhttp://www.trbq.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=16&I
temid=43Book: Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener: Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of
Psychological WealthBook: Eric Weiner: The Geography of BlissBook: Eva Hoffmann: Lost in
Translation: Life in a New LanguageBook: Hazel Markus: Clash: 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make
Us Who We AreVideo: Social Psychology
Alivehttp://psychology.stanford.edu/~tsailab/PDF/socpsychalive.wmvVideo: The Really Big
Questions “Culture and Emotion,” Dr. Jeanne Tsai
Video: Tsai’s description of cultural differences in emotion

Web: Acculturation and Culture Collaborative at

Leuvenhttp://ppw.kuleuven.be/home/english/research/
cscp/acc-researchWeb: Culture and Cognition at the
University of
Michiganhttp://culturecognition.isr.umich.edu/Web:
Experts In Emotion Series, Dr. June Gruber,
Department of Psychology, Yale
Universityhttp://www.yalepeplab.com/teaching/psych1
31_summer2013/expertseries.phpWeb: Georgetown
Culture and Emotion
Labhttp://georgetownculturelab.wordpress.com/Web:
Paul Ekman’s websitehttp://www.paulekman.comWeb:
Penn State Culture, Health, and Emotion
Labhttp://www.personal.psu.edu/users/m/r/mrm280/so
tosite/Web: Stanford Culture and Emotion
Labhttp://www-psych.stanford.edu/~tsailab/index.htm
Web: Wesleyan Culture and Emotion
Labhttp://culture-and-emotion.research.wesleyan.edu/
Discussion Questions

1. What cultural ideas and practices related to emotion were you exposed to when you were
a child? What cultural ideas and practices related to emotion are you currently exposed to
as an adult? How do you think they shape your emotional experiences and expressions?
2. How can researchers avoid inserting their own beliefs about emotion in their research?
3. Most of the studies described above are based on self-report measures. What are some
of the advantages and disadvantages of using self-report measures to understand the
cultural shaping of emotion? How might the use of other behavioral methods (e.g.,
neuroimaging) address some of these limitations?
4. Do the empirical findings described above change your beliefs about emotion? How?
5. Imagine you are a manager of a large American company that is beginning to do work in
China and Japan. How will you apply your current knowledge about culture and emotion
to prevent misunderstandings between you and your Chinese and Japanese employees?

Vocabulary
AffectFeelings that can be described in terms of two
dimensions, the dimensions of arousal and valence
(Figure 2). For example, high arousal positive states
refer to excitement, elation, and enthusiasm. Low
arousal positive states refer to calm, peacefulness,
and relaxation. Whereas “actual affect” refers to the
states that people actually feel, “ideal affect” refers to
the states that people ideally want to
feel.CultureShared, socially transmitted ideas (e.g.,
values, beliefs, attitudes) that are reflected in and
reinforced by institutions, products, and
rituals.EmotionsChanges in subjective experience,
physiological responding, and behavior in response
to a meaningful event. Emotions tend to occur on the
order of seconds (in contract to moods which may
last for days).FeelingsA general term used to describe
a wide range of states that include emotions, moods,
traits and that typically involve changes in subjective
experience, physiological responding, and behavior in
response to a meaningful event. Emotions typically
occur on the order of seconds, whereas moods may
last for days, and traits are tendencies to respond a
certain way across various situations.Independent
selfA model or view of the self as distinct from others
and as stable across different situations. The goal of
the independent self is to express and assert the self,
and to influence others. This model of self is prevalent
in many individualistic, Western contexts (e.g., the
United States, Australia, Western
Europe).Interdependent selfA model or view of the self
as connected to others and as changing in response
to different situations. The goal of the interdependent
self is to suppress personal preferences and desires,
and to adjust to others. This model of self is prevalent
in many collectivistic, East Asian contexts (e.g.,
China, Japan, Korea).Social constructivismSocial
constructivism proposes that knowledge is first
created and learned within a social context and is then
adopted by individuals.UniversalismUniversalism
proposes that there are single objective standards,
independent of culture, in basic domains such as
learning, reasoning, and emotion that are a part of all
human experience.
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Authors
● Jeanne TsaiJeanne Tsai is associate professor of psychology at Stanford University and
director of the Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab. She has received numerous awards
and grants for her work on culture and emotion and on the implications of cultural
 differences in emotion for mental health, decision-making, and person perception.

Creative Commons License

Culture and Emotion by Jeanne Tsai is licensed
under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. Permissions beyond the scope
of this license may be available in our Licensing
Agreement.
How to cite this Noba module using APA Style

Tsai, J. (2023). Culture and emotion. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook
series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/gfqmxtyw

Sections

● Abstract
● Learning Objectives
● Historical Background
● Current and Research Theory
● Cultural Models of Self in North American and East Asian Contexts
● Cultural Similarities and Differences in Emotion: Comparisons of North American and East
Asian Contexts
○ People’s Physiological Responses to Emotional Events Are Similar Across
Cultures, but Culture Influences People’s Facial Expressive Behavior
○ People Suppress Their Emotions Across Cultures, but Culture Influences the
Consequences of Suppression for Psychological Well-Being
○ People Feel Good During Positive Events, but Culture Influences Whether People
Feel Bad During Positive Events
○ People Want to Feel Good Across Cultures, but Culture Influences the Specific
Good States People Want to Feel (Their “Ideal Affect”)
○ People Base Their Happiness on Similar Factors Across Cultures, but Culture
Influences the Weight Placed on Each Factor
● Why Do Cultural Similarities And Differences In Emotion Matter?
● Current Directions In Culture And Emotion Research
○ What About Other Cultures?
○ How Are Cultural Differences in Beliefs About Emotion Transmitted?
○ Could These Cultural Differences Be Due to Temperament?
● Summary
● Outside Resources
● Discussion Questions
 ● Vocabulary
● References
● Authors
● Creative Commons License

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