Cultural influence on emotions

The chapter of this week outlined that there is not only one model of emotions, which is Western, but also other different models depending on the culture and context. Although chapter mostly focuses on stereotypical Eastern and Western collectivist and individualistic or holistic and analytical separation, it is successful in providing new details by introducing some interesting research works.

Study, which drew my attention, was about U.S. and Japanese athletes, where emotions of participants from Japan focused more on their teammates than themselves. It would be interesting to observe how this emotional trend affects athletes’ performance in team sports. Do those cultures, which experience mostly other-focused emotions do better in team sports than those who focus on themselves?

Another interesting point was cathartic and hydraulic models of emotion, where suppression of emotion affects health negatively. I was surprised to discover that for some Eastern cultures it is not the case. In contrast, suppressing emotions leads to even better health, according to studies provided. Emotional expression increased physiological arousal in Asian American participants, which is opposite to cathartic-hydraulic models.

To discuss the article which introduced guilt and shame among Turkish and English-speaking participants, it showed intriguing results. Although the differences were little, it might illustrate how in collectivist culture, people are mostly fear that they will be judged and excluded from in-group, which leads to shame as a dominant state. While in individualistic cultures, only the target person is salient, so instead of shame, they experience guilt, which I believe comes from target’s self-blaming. It is not to say that in collectivist cultures people don’t understand their actions’ consequences on a personal level. It just says that fear of judgement prevails.

Final point which I would like to focus on is how differences in expressing and experiencing emotions play out in the daily interactions: patient-doctor relationships, employer and employee relationships. I liked how chapter emphasized the importance of these findings in different spheres. I believe that further research works should focus how these differences can be dealt with at the workplace and in patient-doctor interactions.