Ekman (1969;1984;1992) theorised that there were six basic, universal emotions; anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise; which has been supported by recent research (Vytal & Hamann, 2010; Scarantino & Griffiths, 2011). Ekman (1969) also established that culture can modify the way individuals interpret these emotions; known as display rules (DR). DR help individuals govern what emotions their culture deems acceptable or taboo (Ekman & Friesen 1975); implying they’re still understood, just downplayed.
Further to DR, culture shapes individual’s language of emotion. Russel (1991) found no word for disgust in polish or sadness in Tahitian. These emotions are meant to be universal, so why are there no words for them in these countries’ cultures? Furthermore, in Tibet, there isn’t a word for emotion itself (Russel, 1991), which welcomes methodological errors when trying to explain the studies, such as; item bias (Van de Vijer & Leung, 1997). However, it’s important to remember that just because an emotion has no word within a culture, it doesn’t mean it isn’t experienced; Kundera (1980) explains that ‘Litost’ (Czech for suffering from one’s own guilts and griefs) has no translation into any other language, but it is definitely felt by many.
Implications from cultural research on the universality of emotions shows additional research is required to fully understand its extent. Basic emotions are perhaps not as universal as originally thought; as Crivelli, (2016) found that agreement with Ekman’s predicted emotion labelling was around 0-16%. Subsequently, global companies and educators need to understand that culture affects peoples understanding of emotions; both interpreting them, their meaning, and conveying them. Consequently, reforms should be made to international and intercultural communication training (Matsumoto, 2007).
References:
Crivelli, C., Russell, J., Jarillo, S., & Fernández-Dols, J. (2016). The fear gasping face as a threat display in a Melanesian society. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, 113(44), 12403-12407. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1611622113
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1969). The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: Categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica,1, 49–98.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1975). Unmasking the face: A guide to recognizing emotions from facial clues. Oxford, England: Prentice-Hall.
Ekman, P. (1984). Expression and the nature of emotions. In K. Scherer & P. Ekman (eds). Approaches to Emotion. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum pp.319-344
Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 169-200.
Kundera, M. (1980). Th ebook of laughter and forgetting (M. H. Heim, Trans.) New York: Knopf.
Matsumoto, D. (2007). Emotion judgements do not differ as a function of perceived nationality. International Journal of Psychology, 42(3), 207–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590601050926
Russell, J. A. (1991). Culture and the categorization of emotions. Psychological Bulletin, 110(3), 426-450. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.110.3.426
Scarantino, A., & Griffiths, P. (2011). Don’t give up on basic emotions. Emotion Review, 3(4), 444–454. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911410745
Van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Leung, K. (1997). Cross-cultural psychology series, Vol. 1. Methods and data analysis for cross-cultural research. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc.
Vytal, K., & Hamann, S. (2010). Neuroimaging support for discrete neural correlates of basic emotions: A voxel-based meta-analysis. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(12), 2864–2885. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2009.21366
Reflections on Culture in Psychology 