Culture and Emotions

The articles of this week are about cultural effects on emotion. Last week, one of the articles about culture and language introduced us to the subject slightly. The article in the book explains the subject from various aspects and the second article presents a related study.
One of the aspects presented in the book points out that the processes of expressing emotions can differ across cultures. For example, laughing out loud in one culture may be perceived as normal whereas in another culture it can seem odd. These differences may be the result of whether the culture has more individualistic or collectivistic features. Another aspect is “ideal affect”. The normative emotional processes also change just like the expressions. Some cultural norms may focus on keeping their emotional regulations stable, whereas others might be seeking more intensity. Based on this, the relationship between individuals and their emotions also changes. Individuals try to regulate their emotions according to the norms of their culture. When it comes to emotions, some emerging trends point out that culture is not effective only in the context of interpersonal relationships, but it is also effective in a biological dimension.
The second article presents a study of moral emotions and violations in different relational models. The study focuses on which emotions will individuals experience when certain relations in society are violated. The study makes a comparison between Turkish and English cultures. It is based on certain situations such as communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing. Violations in these situations are matched with certain emotions. Overall, results were similar in terms of emotional reaction but there were also differences. When Turkish participants were more intense about shame, English participants were more intense about guilt. Also, certain emotions showed a high correlation with certain situations.
The study in the second article was really interesting for me. While the book introduces us to the relationship between culture and emotions, the study makes it more concrete. In my opinion, this relationship is similar to a child who is playing with a play dough. The effects are not only superficial, they go into the individual as people tend to arrange their emotional worlds to the outside world.