Emotion

Charles Darwin stated that emotional expressions are evolved. Emotions serve an adaptive function to ensure survival. They provide social information by communicating inner states to others. If an infant cries this signals the caregiver, that they need to feed or change the infant, enhancing survival. They also provide intrapsychic information to the self. This can trigger flight or fight responses. Emotions help you to keep you safe and survive. If a lion was about to attack you, emotions will activate fear which will then be acted upon. 

Emotions are learnt through socialisation rather than being innate, baby smiles, the parent smiles back. But at the same time, emotion expressions are also found in gorilla's and people with congenital blindness, also visually impaired when born. Blind Judo wrestlers still show the same facial expressions and emotion of victory. 

Universality studies of emotion by Ekman and colleagues 1960/70s showed photos of emotional expression to participants across cultures, in a multiple choice task.

They found that there was a high rate of agreement across cultures. But Mead stated a flaw in the study that the majority of cultures tested was exposed to western media.

Ekman then tested emotion recognition of people not exposed to western media, they were able to identify 6 basic emotions but did not distinguish between fear and surprise. 

Emotions in the non-western culture were asked to express anger, disgust, happiness which was shown to westerners and they correcly classified the emotions. 

These 6 basic emotions include anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. There is a universal pattern of 43 facial muscle contractions. Other emotions are combinations of basic 6 for example jealousy was related to fear, anger, sadness. Micro expresssions reveal hidden emotions can identify when someone is lying. 

Cultural differences in intensity ascribed to expressions Asians tend to rate emotions in Caucasians as LESS INTENSE. 

Matsumoto: found that Japanese rate negative emotions less intensely because collectivism discourages negative expressions of emotions, as they believe it disrupts social interactions and disrupts social harmony. 

Ekman and Friesen: American and Japanese participants viewed disturbing movies. 

Facial expressions secretly videotaped. 

Participants from both groups displayed the same emotional expressions at the same points in the movie. 

Russel samples did not represent universal samples, students from literate cultures. 

Russel argued that the photos did not have any context, and this is not as meaningful for the interdependent self. 

For the interdependent self it is important to have situational factors as this is what is more meaningful.

Recognition was lower with a free-choice format only happiness recognised universally. 

Levenson et al. asked Minagkabau to mimic facial expressions. 

They measured the physiological variables: skin conductance, heart rate and respiration. They held this for 10 seconds. 

They found that the same physiological pattern for Minagankabau and US participants even in anger, even though claims argued that non-westerners should not be aware of negative emotions as they are encouraged to avoid it, it disrupts social interactions and interrupts social harmony and social relationships. 

When asked to name emotion, Minangkaubau answered at less than chance levels. Americans were more accurate. This shows that despite similar physiological evidence of emotion, culture may be influenced by how the emotion is interpreted due to differences in words and phrases that describe emotions.

Basic emotions, personal experience and sociocultural context influences cultural variation in emotional experience. 

Ekman and Friensen created rules of emotions, cultural display rules govern how appropriate it is to display emotions in different social situations. For example, when at a funeral it would be frowned upon and inappropriate to laugh or act silly as you should show more respectful emotions. Socialisation effects emotion, learned in early childhood. There is greater differences in adult displays of emotion than in childhood. 

Ekman and Friensen examined display rules of emotion in cultures, Japanese and Americans videotaped while watching movies to examine spontaneous emotional displays. Participants viewed movies alone or with higher status person. 

Americans did not modify emotional expression as there are no display rules to emotion and does not matter in the presence of another high status person. 

Japanese showed disgust when alone, but smiled in the presence of other person. Cultural display rule is do not show negative emotion in front of higher status people. 

Independent self: disengaged emotions, internal attributes confirmed or denied for example, anger, pride are more frequently experienced by Americans and less experienced by Japanese. 

Interdependent self: engaged emotions, socially contextualised attributes confirmed or denied for example, shame, friendly feelings. More frequently experienced by Japanese than Americans. 

American culture values high arousal positive states such as excitement

Chinese culture values low arousal positive states such as calm and serenity 

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: culture determines language, which determines cognition

Lutz: studied people on an Island in the south Pacific. Two emotions were not found in the west, Fago which means compassion and Song which refers to indignation over a social injury. 

Hyper cognition: highly specialised emotion in a culture because it resonates with a cultural theme. Differentiated terms and rich cognitive network devoted to this emotion. 

Hypo cognition: emotion less emphasised in a culture because corresponding cultural theme is less accessible. No exact word for anger in utku, but concept of anger still exists.