A meta-analysis examined emotion recognition within and across cultures. Emotions were universally recognized at better-than-chance levels. Accuracy was higher when emotions were both expressed and recognized by members of the same national, ethnic, or regional group, suggesting an in-group advantage. This advantage was smaller for cultural groups with greater exposure to one another, measured in terms of living in the same nation, physical proximity, and telephone communication. Majority group members were poorer at judging minority group members than the reverse. Cross-cultural accuracy was lower in studies that used a balanced research design, and higher in studies that used imitation rather than posed or spontaneous emotional expressions. Attributes of study design appeared not to moderate the size of the in-group advantage.

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On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: a meta-analysis.

Subjective well-being (SWB) is composed of people’s evaluations of their lives, including pleasant affect, infrequent unpleasant affect, life satisfaction (LS). We review the research literature concerning the influence of culture on SWB. We argue that some types of well-being, as well as their causes, are consistent across cultures, whereas there are also unique patterns of well-being in societies that are not comparable across cultures. Thus, well-being can be understood to some degree in universal terms, but must also be understood within the framework of each culture. We review the methodological challenges to assessing SWB in different cultures. One important question for future research is the degree to which feelings of well-being lead to the same outcomes in different cultures. The overarching theme of the paper is that there are pancultural experiences of SWB that can be compared across cultures, but that there are also culture-specific patterns that make cultures unique in their experience of well-being.

/pdf/culture-and-subjective-well-being-4yzraa3f03.pdf

Culture and subjective well-being

The purpose of this study is to review the limited literature on the emotional aspects of teachers' lives. First, a multicomponential perspective on emotions is described, then the existing literature on teachers' positive and negative emotions is reviewed and critiqued. Next is a summary of the literature suggesting that teachers' emotions influence teachers' and students' cognitions, motivation, and behaviors. Four areas for future research are proposed: management and discipline, adoption and use of teaching strategies, learning to teach, and teachers' motivation. An overview of research methods used in a multicomponential perspective on emotions is provided. This review draws on a variety of research literatures: educational psychology, social and personality psychology, educational sociology, and research on teachers and teaching.

Teachers' Emotions and Teaching: A Review of the Literature and Directions for Future Research

Parental support, psychological control, and behavioral control: assessing relevance across time, culture, and method.

The authors propose that how people want to feel ("ideal affect") differs from how they actually feel ("actual affect") and that cultural factors influence ideal more than actual affect. In 2 studies, controlling for actual affect, the authors found that European American (EA) and Asian American (AA) individuals value high-arousal positive affect (e.g., excitement) more than do Hong Kong Chinese (CH). On the other hand, CH and AA individuals value low-arousal positive affect (e.g., calm) more than do EA individuals. For all groups, the discrepancy between ideal and actual affect correlates with depression. These findings illustrate the distinctiveness of ideal and actual affect, show that culture influences ideal affect more than actual affect, and indicate that both play a role in mental health.

Cultural variation in affect valuation.

Research on culture and emotion has moved beyond the once central nature–nurture. Evidence suggests that there are universal constituents of emotions – the ‘emotional potential’ – rather than universal emotions. Furthermore, the emotional constituents are assembled in culture-specific ways that are meaningful and predictable, resulting in systematic cultural differences in ‘emotional practices’ (i.e., people's actual emotional lives). Whereas emotions are not universal, the underlying rule of emotional life is: Culturally adaptive emotions are more prevalent and intense. After reviewing empirical evidence for each of these claims, we outline some of the future directions for research on culture and emotion.

Klaus R. Scherer

Papers

Culture and emotion.