Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-18T14:09:44.095Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

20 - Culture and Emotion

Models of Agency as Sources of Cultural Variation in Emotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Batja Mesquita  and
Hazel Rose Markus
Edited by
Antony S. R. Manstead ,
Nico Frijda  and
Agneta Fischer
Batja Mesquita
Affiliation:
Wake Forest University
Hazel Rose Markus
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology
Antony S. R. Manstead
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Nico Frijda
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Agneta Fischer
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Get access

Summary

ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses in what ways culture influences emotional processes. The authors propose that different cultural models of agency may influence various aspects of emotions, thus accounting for cultural variance. A distinction is made between a conjoint model of agency, more common in collectivist cultures, and a disjoint model of agency, more often found in individualist cultures. Studies are reviewed that compare members from individualist and collectivist cultures in their selection of emotional events, their appraisal of events, and the way they cope with events.

CULTURE AND EMOTION: MODELS OF AGENCY AS SOURCES OF CULTURAL VARIATION IN EMOTION

We must admit that we have always thought of our own emotions as natural, not cultural. The reason, we suspect, is that our emotions were socialized to fit the cultural realities within which we lived for many years: Dutch and North American middle-class environments, respectively. As long as our emotions were in concordance with the cultural environment that afforded and supported them, the cultural constitution of these emotions remained invisible to us.

We both gained some perspective on the culture-specificity of our emotions when we came to engage in cultural environments with which our emotions were at odds. For the first author, this happened upon moving to the United States. American people initially seemed unnaturally happy, smiling a lot and asserting several times a day that they felt “great.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Feelings and Emotions
The Amsterdam Symposium
 , pp. 341 - 358
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abu-Lughod, L. (1986). Veiled sentiments. Berkeley: University of California Press
Befu, H. (1986). An ethnography of dinner entertainment in Japan. In T. S. Lebra and W. P. Lebra (Eds.), Japanese culture and behavior. Selected readings (pp. 108–120). Honolulu: University of Hawaiʿ‘i Press
Benedict, R. (1946). The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Briggs, J. L. (1970). Never in anger: Portrait of an Eskimo family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
D'Andrade, R. G. (1984). Culture meaning systems. In R. A. Shweder and R. A. Levine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion (pp. 88–119). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Doi, L. T. (1973). The autonomy of dependence. Tokyo: Kodansha
Ekman, P.; Friesen, W. V.; O'Sullivan, M.; Chan, A.; Diacoyanni-Tarlatzis, I.; Heider, K.; Krause, R.; LeCompte, W. A.; Pitcairn, T.; Ricci-Bitti, P. E.; Scherer, K. R.; Tomita, M.; & Tzavaras, A. (1987). Universals and cultural differences in the judgements of facial expressions of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(4), 712–717CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elliott, A.; Chirkov, V.; Kim, Y.; & Sheldon, K. (2001). A cross-cultural analysis of avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals. Psychological Science, 12, 505–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellsworth, P. C. (1994). Sense, culture, and sensibility. In S. Kitayama and H. R. Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Heine, S. J.; Lehman, D. R.; Markus, H. R.; & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?Psychological Review, 106(4), 766–794CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgins, E.; Shah, J.; & Friedman, R. J. (1997). Emotional responses to goal attainment: Strength of regulatory focus as a moderator. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 515–525CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holland, D.; Lachicotte, W., Jr.; Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Idzelis, M.; Mesquita, B.; Karasawa, M.; & Hayashi, A. (2002). Cultural differences in emotional coping: American and Japanese responses to offense. Paper presented at the Third Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, February, Savannah, GA
Izard, C. E. (1994). Innate and universal facial expressions: Evidence from developmental and cross-cultural research. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 288–299CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karasawa, M. (2001). Nihonnjinnni okeru jitano ninnshiki: Jikohihan baiasuto tasyakouyou baiasu [A Japanese mode of self-making: Self-criticism and other enhancement]. Japanese Journal of Psychology, 72(4), 198–209Google Scholar
Kim, H. (2001). Deviance: Uniqueness and time in context. Paper presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Antonio, TX
Kim, H. H. W., & Markus, H. R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony or conformity? A cultural analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(4), 785–800CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitayama, S.; Markus, H. R.; & Kurokawa, M. (2000). Culture, emotion, and well-being: Good feelings in Japan and the United States. Cognition and Emotion, 14(1), 93–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitayama, S.; Matsumoto, D.; Markus, H. R.; & Norasakkunkit, V. (1997). Individual and collective processes in the construction of the self: Self-enhancement in the US and self-criticism in Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(6), 1245–1267CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitayama, S.; Mesquita, B.; & Karasawa, M. (2002). The emotional basis of independent and interdependent selves: The intensity of experiencing engaging and disengaging emotions in the US and Japan. Manuscript under review
Lee, A. Y.; Aaker, J. L.; & Gardner, W. L. (2000). The pleasures and pains of distinct self-construals: The role of interdependence in regulatory focus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(6), 1122–1134CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, R. I. (1978). Tahitian gentleness and redundant controls. In A. Montagu (Ed.), Learning non-aggression: The experience of non-literate societies (pp. 222–235). New York: Oxford University Press
Lewis, C. C. (1995). Educating hearts and minds. New York: Cambridge University Press
Lutz, C. (1988). Ethnographic perspectives on the emotion lexicon. In V. E. A. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive perspectives on emotion and motivation (pp. 399–419). New York: Kluwer AcademicCrossRef
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1994). The cultural construction of self and emotion: Implications for social behavior. In S. Kitayama and H. R. Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence (pp. 89–130). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (In press). Models of agency: Sociocultural diversity in the construction of action. Nebraska symposium on motivation
Markus, H. R.; Mullally, P. R.; & Kitayama, S. (1997). Selfways: Diversity in modes of cultural participation. In U. Neisser and D. A. Jopling (Eds.), The conceptual self in context: Culture, experience, self-understanding (pp. 13–61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Mesquita, B. (2001a). Culture and emotion. Different approaches to the question. In T. J. Mayne and G. A. Bonanno (Eds.), Emotions. Current issues and future directions (pp. 214–250). New York: Guilford Press
Mesquita, B. (2001b). Emotions in collectivist and individualist contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(1), 68–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesquita, B. (2002). Emotions as dynamic cultural phenomena. In R. Davidson, H. Goldsmith, and K. R. Scherer (Eds.), The handbook of the affective sciences (pp. 871–890). New York: Oxford University Press
Mesquita, B., & Ellsworth, P. C. (2001). The role of culture in appraisal. In K. R. Scherer and A. Schorr (Eds.), Appraisal processes in emotion: Theory, methods, research (pp. 233–248). New York: Oxford University Press
Mesquita, B., & Frijda, N. H. (1992). Cultural variations in emotions: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 112(2), 179–204CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mesquita, B.; Frijda, N. H.; & Scherer, K. R. (1997). Culture and emotion. In P. Dasen and T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 255–297). Boston: Allyn & Bacon
Mesquita, B., & Karasawa, M. (2002). Different emotional lives. Cognition and Emotion, 16(1), 127–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesquita, B.; Karasawa, M.; & Chu, R. L. (In preparation). Predictors of pleasantness in three cultures: A comparison between the United States, Japan, and Taiwan. Winston-Salem: Wake Forest University
Mesquita, B.; Karasawa, M.; Haire, A.; & Izumi, S. (In preparation). The emotion process as a function of cultural models: A comparison between American, Mexican, and Japanese cultures
Miller, J. G.; Fung, H.; & Mintz, J. (1996). Self-construction through narrative practices: A Chinese and American comparison of early socialization. Ethos, 24, 237–280CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morling, B.; Kitayama, S.; & Miyamoto, Y. (2002). Cultural practices emphasize influence in the United States and adjustment in Japan. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 311–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking through cultures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Stephenson, P. H. (1989). Going to McDonalds in Leiden: Reflections on the concept of self and society in the Netherlands. Ethos, 17, 226–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Der Horst, H. (1996). The low sky: Understanding the Dutch. Den Haag, The Netherlands: Scriptum Books
Wierzbicka, A. (1994). Emotion, language, and cultural scripts. In S. Kitayama and H. R. Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Emperical studies of mutual influence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×