Question

What does emotion mean? What is the connection between how emotions are manifested and interpreted and culture? (4 Points) 400 words

Answer 1

We experience different kinds of emotions in our day to day lives. Emotions are a set of feelings or a subjective set of being which influence our thought and behavior. According to David G. Meyers, human emotion involves three components: physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience. Emotions are the intentional, immediate reactions that we display in response to what we experience. For example: feeling happy, angry, scared, etc.

Although the basic emotions ( seven universal emotions) remain same no matter where we go, the way in which they are expressed often vary from culture to culture. What may be considered as an appropriate emotional reaction in a particular culture might be offensive when displayed in some other culture. Therefore, people in different cultures acquire different emotions not only in terms of how they are expressed but also how they are developed in the first place.

One way to study how emotions and culture are interconnected is through the study of display rules. Display rules are norms that dictate which display of emotion is culturally appropriate and acceptable. (For example, In the United States, while greeting their male friends, men usually do not embrace and kiss each other as such behavior would make them uncomfortable or even angry. Whereas, In many European countries, acquaintances normally embrace and kiss each other on both cheeks, as avoiding this type of greeting might seem unfriendly.) These rules are learned from childhood, interacting with others around us. Thus, emotions are a cultural phenomenon.

Apart from how people express emotions, how they are interpreted in different cultures also vary. Culture influences how people interpret a situation and the consequent expression of emotion i.e, people from different cultures interpret the same social context in different ways. In a study where participants were asked to look at faces with conflicting expressions; It was found that Japanese participants gave more attention to the emotion portrayed by the eyes, whereas American participants were comparatively more influenced by the mouth region. One explanation for such a difference in perception could be the manifestation of less strict display rules that influences people of American culture to concentrate on the mouth region which is more expressive part of the face as compared to Japanese culture where stronger display rules exert higher control prompting people to pay attention to the eyes and other features that carry more information about the true emotional state.