Emotions and Culture - Cultural Norms of Emotions

Cultural Norms of Emotions

Culture provides structure, guidelines, expectations, and rules to help people understand and interpret behaviors. Several ethnographic studies suggest there are cultural differences in social consequences, particularly when it comes to evaluating emotions. For example, as Jean Briggs described in the Utku Eskimo population, anger was rarely expressed, and in the rare occasion that it did occur, it resulted in social ostracism. These cultural expectations of emotions are sometimes referred to as display rules. Psychologists (Ekman & Friesen, 1969; Izard, 1980; Sarni, 1999) believe that these rules are learned during a socialization process. Ekman and Friesen (1975) have also suggested that these “unwritten codes” govern the manner in which emotions may be expressed, and that different rules may be internalized as a function of an individual's culture, gender or family background. Miyamoto & Ryff (2011) used the term cultural scripts to refer to cultural norms that influence how people expect emotions to be regulated. Cultural scripts dictate how positive and negative emotions should be experienced and combined. Cultural scripts may also guide how people choose to regulate their emotions which ultimately influences an individual’s emotional experience. For example, research suggests that in Western cultures, the dominant social script is to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative emotions. In Eastern cultures, the dominant cultural script is grounded in “dialectical thinking” and seeking to find a middle way by experiencing a balance between positive and negative emotions. Because normative behaviors in these two cultures vary, it should also be expected that their cultural scripts would also vary. Tsai et al. (2007) argues that not only do cultural factors influence ideal affect (i.e., the affective states that people ideally want to feel) but that that the influence can be detected very early. Their research suggests that preschool aged children are socialized to learn ideal affect through cultural products such as children storybooks. They found that European American preschool children preferred excited (vs. calm) smiles and activities more and perceived an excited (vs. calm) smile as happier than Taiwanese Chinese preschoolers. This is consistent with American best sellers containing more excited and arousing content in their books than the Taiwanese best sellers. These findings suggest that cultural differences in which emotions are desirable or, ideal affect, become evident very early.