Culture and Emotion

How does your own cultural background influence your emotional responses?

 

First off we can find a variety of opinions that have to do with this phenomenon, but these opinions opinions can be divide in two categories. The people who does not accept this phenomenon thinks that emotion is part of our evolutionary history, that each emotion carries a function, and also that emotions are the same everywhere, no matter the culture nor the cultural background.

 

On the other hand the people who supports the idea that culture truly shapes the emotion of an individual, bases this idea in several facts. The first fact is that culture suggests what are the appropriate solicitors of each emotion. This statement implies that each culture has a specific way of thinking in an emotion,for example, depending on the culture of an individual, the individual will have a different image on his mind about what happiness is.  Besides of this, culture shapes appraisals of emotions, which means that the same appraisal will lead to different emotion depending on the background of the individual.

 

Furthermore studies have shown that culture totally shapes the way in which individuals express their emotions. Being more specific, when, how and, why would and individual express emotions. For example in America, and most of Europe laughing in public is seen as a pretty normal thing, but in some Asians countries laughing in public is considered a bad and impolite thing.

 

The next factor is the valuation that each culture places in experiencing emotion, or also known as the way in which each culture puts more or less importance to different emotions. An example of this is that Western individuals have as ideal feel the feeling of positivism, while Asian individual reports tell us that their ideal feeling is calmness.

 

Lastly, culture influences the kind of emotions that a person emphasizes, which also can be described as the emotion that a person highly regards, or the emotion that most captures the attention of an individual.