Chapter 3: Cultural Understandings of Emotions

Question 1

two approaches in understanding how culture influences emotions

Answer 1

• psychological anthropologists have explored how different cultures shape emotional experiences and expressions.
• another approach involves comparing how people with diverse cultural backgrounds experience emotions in multicultural societies and the global economy

Question 2

cultural approach to emotions

Answer 2

examining how emotions are constructed by cultural processes

Question 3

independent selves

Answer 3

individuals with independent selves focus on distinctiveness and stable internal causes, emphasizing personal traits

Question 4

interdependent selves

Answer 4

those with interdependent construals see themselves as connected to others, emphasizing social context and situational influences

Question 5

cultural differences extended to emotional experiences

Answer 5

• american students reported more intense socially disengaging emotions
• japanses students reported more intense, socially engaging emotions

Question 6

cultural variants on emotional support

Answer 6

• in independent cultures, emotional support did not affect positive emotional states
• in interdependent cultures, support positively predicted emotional states

Question 7

elicitors

Answer 7

cultural variations in the importance of specific values influence the elicitors of emotions related to those values

Question 8

affect evaluation theory

Answer 8

suggests that emotions promoting cultural values play a more prominent role in people’s social lives

Question 9

historical method

Answer 9

used to understand how people behaved differently in the past, reveals certain trends in the implicit theories of emotions in Europe