Culture, Self and Emotion

1 Theme 3: Culture, Self and Emotion Theories of Culture and Self How might we start to understand the impact of our cultural background on ourselves as thinking, feeling beings? This is a very hard question to answer. It is hard from the point of view of disentangling our personal selves from our cultural selves. Is there a ‘me’ that can be located and explored both separately from, as well as in combination with, life in general as it goes on in my household, workplace, social group, sports club, or neighbourhood? How might I cast the ‘me’ – the individual person – known as Graham (or whoever you happen to be)? What words might I choose to describe all the bits that go to make up who I am and what I'm like? Might those words reflect the essence of the person who is searching for the essence of myself – the ‘I’ as scientist, subject, and doer in the act of searching – and also the one who is the focus of my analysis – the ‘me’ as known object of my musing? How might ‘I’ describe ‘me’ without making some references to other beings or objects that inhabit my world? Is it possible for the ‘I’ to describe ‘me’ without making reference to my social roles and relationships with others? One way of trying to answer these questions is to look at ways in which we describe ourselves. To guide you through your self-description, try the first exercise in your resources for Theme 3. While as conscious human beings we are able to contemplate such questions, we are nevertheless constrained in the ways we answer them by our experience of the world. Consider the analogy of a goldfish – on which we will confer consciousness for the purpose of this exercise – which lives all of its life in a goldfish tank. It knows only its watery world, the other goldfish with which it shares its tank, and what life holds for a goldfish in a goldfish tank. It can reflect on life outside of the tank and how it receives its daily ration, but can it ever know that other life? Even if it were to be relocated to a natural freshwater habitat, would it still view its existence as if it were in the tank? Culture constrains us as human beings in a similar fashion to the constraints that being a goldfish and being in a goldfish tank places on our marine friend. It does this in subtle ways as you might come to understand – I myself have difficulty appreciating what it would be like to grow up in another culture – when we analyse the differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultural orientations. When people define themselves in terms of how ‘I am, what ‘I like’, what ‘I do’, and when their self-description clearly delineates between themselves and others or their social affiliations, their view of self is described as an independent one. Such a self view is a typically Western self-vies: "The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic centre of awareness, emotion, judgment and action organised into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the world's cultures" (Geertz, 1975, p.48). It is a “peculiar” self-view, Geertz argued, because many other cultures do not view the self in that way. Another view of self is the interdependent view of self. What makes us "us" (not what "I" am) are the distinctive sets of relationships into which we are placed with other people. Within this interdependent construction, in order to preserve one's identity, or sense of self, one must preserve the harmony of one's relationships with others, by behaving appropriately within those relationships. Markus and Kitayama (1991) have used the term connectedness to describe the essential quality of the interdependent self.

2 "A normative imperative of [connected] cultures is to maintain ...... interdependence among individuals. Experiencing interdependence entails seeing oneself as part of an encompassing social relationship and recognising that one's behaviour is determined, contingent on, and, to a larger extent, organised by what the actor perceives to be the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others in the relationship." (p. 225) Matsumoto (2000, pp.54-58) discusses the independent-interdependent distinction as it pertains to selfdescription and understanding. Although Markus and Kitayama (1991) directed their analysis of self-understanding primarily at Asian cultures, the independent-interdependent distinction has emerged from research in other cultures as well. In Indigenous cultures in Australia, according to Davidson and Reser (1996), "Aboriginal self-construction is in many ways collective or interdependent ...... Who one is in an Aboriginal community is expressed as a complex intersection of roles, relationships, mutual obligations and expectations, and common connections. While country, clan membership, kinship location, and shared matrilines and patrilines are primary intersects, other self-reference points include shared totemic affiliations, ceremonies, and language. Those Aboriginal skeins of relatedness extend to land, the natural world, and the spirit world, contrary to the western divisions of natural versus man-made, myth versus reality, and past versus present and future. Self is thus situationally and socially defined." (p.116-117) This view of Indigenous self not only accounts for one’s relationships with other members of one’s community and family group, but also for one’s relationships with other species and natural objects and physical spaces. As we shall see, how the self is viewed has implications for how one should feel about and behave toward others. For Westerners the depth of meaning in those human and anthropomorphic connections is difficult to fathom. Here a scientific analogy might aid our understanding of interdependence or connectivity. “We are driven to the conclusion that there are two ways of advancing from primitive truth. One such way was the way taken by some of the Greeks: to refine the idea of causation in such a way that one finished up with a mechanical explanation of the universe, such as Democritus did with his atoms. The other way is to systematise the universe of things and events into a structural pattern which conditioned all the mutual influences of its different parts” (Needham, 1978, p.166). Recognising that one should be attending to one’s relationships with others, maintaining the emotional valence of those relationships, and reciprocating to other’s behaviour and emotional responses to oneself, is easier said than done when one’s own view of self is of the independent kind. A full appreciation of the interdependent self is expressed in an everyday sense in terms of what makes me ‘me’ and not who ‘I’ am. What makes us ‘us’ is the distinctive sets of relationships into which we are placed with other people, and in which the actual identities of those others is important. It is not our personal traits that make our interconnected selves distinctive, but those relationships with others. Therefore, to preserve one’s interdependent identity – one’s sense of self – one must preserve the harmony of one’s relationships with others who are a significant part of one’s life. Furthermore, one will need to behave in ways that are appropriate within those relationships and within the social contexts in which the relationships are found. So one does not behave in the same way toward everyone, but instead one behaves according to the obligations that are inherent in one’s established relationships with others. This is a different way of thinking about one self from seeing one self as straightforward, or caring, or tough, etc. Connected selves are strongly influenced also by how others are behaving at the time. One has expectations about the situational

3 nature of others’ behaviour, and one seeks to normalise interactions in terms of those expectations. In contrast, an independent, Western view of self holds that selves are independent, self-contained, and autonomous. They are configured by internal attributes such as personality traits, attitudes and beliefs, and values. People with independent self-concepts tend to behave, and describe their behaviour, primarily as a function of those internal attributes. Inherent in this distinction between independent and interdependent views of self is the assumption that these views of self reflect a cultural disposition toward holding these self-views. Independent self-views are said, and indeed have been shown, to be the predominant self-view in individualistic cultures, i.e., cultures that strongly reinforce the value of individualism. Interdependent or connected self-views are said, and have been shown, to be more prevalent in collectivistic cultures, i.e., cultures that strongly reinforce the value of relationships between members of a community. The measurement of individualism and collectivism is discussed further in Matsumoto (2000, pp.41-47). Research into the relationship between culture and self-views has addressed questions about how we view and describe ourselves, how we view and describe others and, interestingly but not surprisingly, how we insult others. Bond and Cheung (1983) asked Japanese, Hong Kong Chinese and American students a set of 20 ‘Who am I’ questions. American students gave more trait descriptions (friendly, happy, withdrawn) than Japanese students. Hong Kong students fell in between the other two groups. The authors explained the ordering of groups in terms of the educational and acculturation influences on Hong Kong students. Triandis, McCusker and Hui (1990) asked the same question of American, European and Chinese students, and found that Chinese students gave more responses than the other two groups that signalled membership of a social category. However, the scoring system used by Bond and Cheung did not distinguish between statements such as ‘I am a student’ and ‘I am a member of the HKU psychology class. It might be asked whether both statements are role statements or whether the latter statement locates the self as a member of a specific collective of relationships. Keeping in mind comments that I made earlier about the different facets of the self and locking self-description into a particular way of self-reflection, the ‘I am ...’ question might predispose participants to adopt an independent and agency-oriented strategy when answering it. Cousins (1989) asked Japanese and American students a similar question. American respondents were more likely to offer trait labels while Japanese students were more likely to offer contextually qualified descriptors. Cousins then changed the task, so that the ‘I am ...’ question contained reference to specific social contexts, e.g. ‘I am ..... at home’, ‘I am ..... at work’, ‘I am ..... with my friends’, etc. Japanese respondents used more trait labels than they did when the context was unspecified. American students used fewer trait labels than they did before and started to qualify their trait descriptions of themselves, e.g. ‘I am often lazy at home.’ Cousins suggested that even when Americans are required to act contextually they attempt to maintain an independent, context-free self concept. Consider the two different ways of responding to the ‘I am .....’ question. Ms Smith teaches English language to Japanese students in a Japanese school. She describes herself as female, extraverted, honest, a teacher, and a movie buff. Mr Kawai is one of her students who describes himself as a member of the Kobe judo academy, one of three children in the Kawai household, a pupil in the 11th grade at Motomachi Senior College, a son who respects his parents, and a friend of Yoshi and Kazuo.

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A similar difference emerges between independent and interdependent self-views when respondents are made to describe emotions. Markus and Kitayama (1991) reported that Japanese respondents made distinctions between emotions that reflected whether they were ‘connected’ with the person to whom the behaviour was directed and those that were not about interpersonal connections. Stipek, Weiner and Li (1989) asked Chinese and American respondents to describe situations in which they became angry. American respondents were more likely to talk about events that happened to them, but Chinese respondents were more likely to talk about events that happened to others. A similar pattern emerges when respondents are asked to describe other people. Shweder and Bourne (1982) asked American and Indian students to describe their peers. 72% of American responses were context-free trait descriptions, e.g., he is generous. Only 50% of Indian responses were context-free descriptions, and 50% were contextualised descriptions, e.g., he takes care of his elderly parents. Korten (1974) reported on American and Ethiopian descriptions of others. American respondents accentuated others’ knowledge, abilities and personal characteristics. Ethiopian respondents gave answers that focused on how a person interacted with, and thought about, others. Miller (1984) gave American and Indian respondents scenarios that required them to make judgements about an actor’s behaviour. For example, a driver and passenger were on a motor cycle whose back tyre bursts causing an accident. The passenger fell from the cycle and struck his head. The driver, who was a lawyer on his way to court to appear on behalf of a client and was uninjured, took his passenger by taxi to a hospital where he left him, and continued on to the court without consulting the medical staff about the seriousness of his friend’s injuries. Ultimately the passenger died from an internal injury. Miller asked her respondents why the driver acted as he did (ignoring the legality of his actions). American respondents answered in terms of the driver’s personality characteristics and motives, e.g., he was untrustworthy, traumatised or career oriented. Indian respondents answered mainly in terms of his assessment of the situation and his other commitments, e.g., he had a duty of care to his client, or his passenger did not look seriously injured. Kearins (1988) reported on her attempts to investigate the nature of intelligent behaviour among Indigenous Australian people living in the north of Western Australia. Adults described intelligent children as helpful, being responsible for their own needs, having good bush skills, and good sportspeople. Unintelligent children were those who were lazy, dependent on others’ goodwill, silly – they tormented, bullied or destroyed –, disrespectful and ill-mannered. If asked to describe myself, I would say as one thing about me that I like reading Asian literatures, whether they are in English or translated in English. This type of response typically reflects an independent self. It is interesting in Chinese literature, as a comparison to my way of describing myself and others, to study how Chinese writers describe their characters. For example, young women who seek dalliances are not said to be immoral, but instead are said to bring shame on their family by continuing to meet with men who are not their chosen husbands.

5 So what is involved in knowing how to ‘sledge’ (to use a common Australian expression) or, if you like, how to insult another person? Semin and Rubin (1990) received the following types of responses to their inquiries about insults in individually oriented northern Italy: ‘stupid’, ‘cretin’, sexual profanities, and religious profanities. In collectivistically oriented southern Italy, insults focused on relatives, sisters, parents, and incest relationships. Referring again to my penchant for Chinese literature characters insult one another frequently by reference to sexual assault of ancestors, mothers, wives, and other relatives, or by emphasising likeness to certain animal species. In Japan, one might insult another in a more dignified fashion by using an overly familiar or common form of address rather than a form of address that denotes respect behaviour. Bond and Cheung found that Chinese students responded more strongly to insults that were group directed rather than individually directed. Finally, under this section on culture and self-views we will look at how one interprets one’s performance outcomes. How does one view one’s success or failure on a task? How does one differentially weight one’s contributions to success and failure of an enterprise with the contributions of others to that same enterprise? Are there any cultural differences in the manner in which individuals attribute success and failure, and how might those cultural differences be explained? (See Matsumoto (2000, pp.421-431) for a more in-depth discussion on attribution behaviour in different cultural settings.) Two attribution biases have been the focus of cross-cultural research into how individuals explain their success or failure on a task. One bias, known as the selfserving bias (Nisbett & Ross, 1980) involves individuals attributing success to their own skills and abilities, but contributing failure to the actions and influences of others, the nature of the situation or task, or to other external factors. If I pass my assignment it’s because I’m clever or because I’ve put in the hard work required. If I fail my assignment it’s because the lecturer’s instructions to the class were unclear, the questions were unfair, I was having difficulty with Web access, work commitments prevented me from studying hard, or the marking was inaccurate. Does this sound familiar? I know I occasionally engage in this type of thinking when things are not going well for me at work. Another, though equally biased, way of judging the reasons behind one’s successes and failures is to attribute one’s successes to the contributions of others or to favourable circumstances and failures to one’s own shortcomings or lack of ability. This attribution bias is known as a self-effacing, or modesty, bias. If I pass my assignment, it is because the lecturer was very helpful, the question reflected material that had been covered adequately in class, or my study group worked well together. If I fail, it is because I am not clever enough to be at university or because I did not put in the work required to succeed. There has been a significant amount of research into performance attribution. It is generally the case with Westerners that explanations of success and failure are biased in a self-serving fashion. However, even Westerners differ in terms of the extent to which they are prepared to take responsibility for, and control over, their own actions or events that have occurred. Strangely, but understandably from the perspective of attribution theory, abrogating all responsibility for failures and negative events is often an unproductive way of dealing with unpleasant circumstances. It can cause us to become angry about what has occurred, and this in turn can activate various psychological distress symptoms. But does self-serving bias operate to the same extent in other cultures and, if not, what effect does self-blame have on individuals from those

6 cultures? Kashima and Triandis (1986) gave Japanese and American students a difficult task to do. American students were more likely to explain their success than their failure in terms of their own ability. Japanese students conversely were more likely to explain their failure rather than their success in terms of their own ability. Fry and Ghosh (1980) studied Caucasian and Asian Indian Canadian children’s explanations for task performance outcomes. The Caucasian children were more likely to attribute their success than their failure to their own level of ability, and failure than success to circumstances such as luck or poor explanations of the task. The Indian Canadian children conversely were more likely to contribute success rather than failure to luck, and failure to their own level of ability. These results and others suggest that selfserving bias is more prevalent in individualistic cultural settings, and that self-effacing bias is more prevalent in collectivistic cultural settings. Two qualifications need to be added to this statement of the general trend. First, attribution of ability seems to work somewhat differently from attribution of effort. Second, the self-effacing bias is more pronounced in collectivistic cultural settings when the context of the performance is clearly specified in the questions that are asked of the respondents. The remainder of Theme 3 explores aspects of human emotion that may be universal – we have previously labelled such aspects of behaviour etics – and compares and contrasts these components with aspects of human emotion that are culturally determined – or emics. In order to achieve that aim we will look in order at the following component aspects of human emotion: § experiencing emotion § expressing emotion § perceiving others' emotional expression § labelling emotions § displaying emotions § distinguishing between emotion and other aspects of human experience and behaviour There is a very basic question that requires an answer before we can proceed further to analyse questions about culture's effects on human emotion. The question is whether emotional experience is part of the human condition? Matsumoto (2000, pp.306-307) considers a number of theories that link emotion and physical arousal. Matsumoto makes specific mention of the work of Schacter and Singer’s theory. In their theory of emotion, the latter is reduced to a state of physiological arousal. The labelling of emotion is determined by the circumstances that led to the arousal. For example, heightened physiological responses associated with the successful birth of a baby might be labelled happiness. The same physiological responses experienced at the end of a bungee rope might be labelled fear by some and excitement by others. What changes is not one’s physiological reactions but how one interprets them. Other theorists have placed emotional responding within the confine of cortical arousal. The step from cortical arousal to cognitive interpretation is not large. If these theories have substance, then if one were to suggest that individuals in some cultures are unemotional, i.e., without emotion, then one would be suggesting that those individuals are "unwired". Knowing what we do about physiological similarities between individuals of different cultural backgrounds, it is reasonable to assume that all people in all cultures experience emotions of one kind or another. In this respect emotional experience – the experiencing of emotion – is a universal phenomenon.

7 Research into emotional expression has been concerned primarily with facial expression of emotion (see Matsumoto, 2000, pp. 272-282). Research by Eckman and his colleagues in over twelve countries whose residents differ markedly in terms of their ethnicity, customs and traditions has suggested that at least 6 facial expressions of emotion can be expressed and reliably discriminated between. They are: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear. Eckman's research showed that even when the person expressing the emotion and the person observing that behaviour were very different in terms of their cultural background, e.g., New Guinean and Caucasian Australian, individuals could still reliably produce and recognise the facial expressions associated with those 6 emotions. Furthermore, the intensity of emotions being expressed facially could be identified with reasonable accuracy. Therefore, emotional expression, in the form of some facial expressions, also appears to be an etic or universal phenomenon. Eckman’s research findings, if taken at face value, suggest that the categories of emotion listed above are also universals, in the sense that they are perceived and labelled in the same fashion in all of the cultures in which the research was conducted. However, when making the judgement that emotional experience and expression are universals, it should be borne in mind that the research studies on which that judgement is based used a common procedure which required participants to view facial expressions and to select from a set of labels the label which best described the expression being viewed. That is, the task required research participants to put one label chosen from a set of labels to one face chosen from a set of faces. It is reasonable, and necessary, to ask the following questions and to search for answers to them before assumptions about universality of emotional expression can be sustained. How might people in their own words describe the expression of emotion by others? Will individuals from similar cultural backgrounds use similar descriptive terms for emotional expressions when asked to do so? Matsumoto (2000, pp.282-290) reviews in some detail the evidence for and against the argument for universals in human emotional expression and perception. To summarise the findings, it seems that many more descriptions emerge when participants are required to supply their own labels to those facial expressions. However, some emotions like happiness and surprise are consistently labelled, while others like interest and shame are less consistently identifiable. Markus & Kitayama (1991) listed 20 different emotional terms in Japanese. Each word was then paired with each other word and each pair of words was rated in terms of whether the emotions they described were similar to or different from one another. Some emotions were easily distinguishable from other emotions, but others were not. For these Japanese participants, emotions that related to maintenance or severance of social relations were not easily distinguishable from one another. This suggests that interpretation and labelling of emotions are not as universal as Eckman’s original research had indicated. It is important to draw a distinction between experiencing, expressing and displaying emotions. One might feel a sense of elation – happiness – following receipt of an excellent test mark. One would normally smile broadly when one is feeling so happy. However, one may not wish to appear so happy in the presence of a classmate whose test grade was disappointing. So the difference between emotional expression and emotional display is the difference between how we show emotion and whether we show emotion. Much of the research knowledge that has been gathered about emotional display has come from the labelling studies of Markus and Kitayama (1991) and

8 Matsumoto (1989). Matsumoto found that happiness was more readily identifiable in individualistic cultures and sadness was more readily identifiable in collectivistic cultures. American and Japanese respondents were given the task of identifying 6 (real) emotions from facial expressions of males and females. American respondents were better able than Japanese respondents to identify anger, disgust, fear and sadness, but both groups were equally adept at identifying happiness and surprise. Japanese judgements were more accurate for male than for female models. Japanese respondents were less adept than the American respondents in judging emotions and situations that were socially unacceptable or undesirable. Scherer and other researchers (see Scherer & Wallbott, 1994) asked people in 37 different countries to report on naturally occurring emotions. Happiness and anger were consistently reported. Reports on other emotions suggested that there was considerable variation for the latter in terms of their frequency, intensity and duration. Guddykunst, Ting-Toomey and Chua (1988) argued that different situations trigger different emotions in different cultures, e.g., in high masculine/high uncertainty avoidance cultures novel situations will frequently elicit a fear response. Guddykunst et al. (1988) in their research also elaborated on the relationship between individualism-collectivism and emotional perception and display. An example of that difference can be found in the juxtaposition of our Ms Smith’s and Mr Kawai’s feelings and conduct after a classroom disagreement. During the disagreement Mr Kawai was very guarded in letting Ms Smith know what he was feeling. However, he vented some of his frustration to his friend, but was still careful about showing too much of his embarrassment about Ms Smith’s behaviour toward him. Ms Smith had raised her voice when they talked and her face revealed her sense of annoyance. When she later spoke with the school principal she was very critical of Mr Kawai for his failure to accept her point of view. Both acted as they would with other members of their own cultural group, and neither realised just how annoyed the other party was. Mr Kawai deep down was ashamed about the disagreement with his teacher. Ms Smith was angry about the intransigence of her pupil. (adapted from Smith & Bond, 1993, p. 63) As with understanding the importance of individualistic or collectivistic values for how we think about ourselves, it is difficult for us to break out of our cultural domain when we analyse our feelings. If our upbringing is essentially Western, in addition to our heightened sensitivity to positive rather than negative emotional expression and display, we grow up clearly distinguishing between how we act – or should act, what we think and how we feel. There is pressure on us to separate out our thoughts from our feelings. Have you ever been confronted with the statement, ‘Let’s look at this rationally’, i.e., ‘Let’s not let our emotions get in the way of our making a sound decision’? Or have you heard someone say, ‘If I’d stopped to analyse what I was feeling, I would never have done what I did’? The delineation between thought, emotion and action is also evident in general psychology. Emotion is seen and studied separately from other aspects of human experience such as thought, motivation, perception and action. In some other cultures all action, all thought, is accompanied by an emotional response. The system of social relationships prescribes the emotion one should display when doing a task, when interacting with others, etc. The relationship is as much dependent on the emotional

9 display as it is on the other aspects of behaviour in those situations. An example of this can be found in the importance that appropriate emotional conduct has for Indigenous Australians: ‘Feelings come first’ in this indigenous psychology. They are the most meaningful touchstones with respect to ongoing transactions with one’s physical and social worlds, and are also central to communication and meaning. “Not to show proper feeling in one’s interactions with others is to question the relationship, not just to violate an expectancy, but to threaten a severing of connectedness, critical to a sense of self and well being.” (Davidson & Reser, 1996) Matsumoto (2000, pp.307-309) also provides some specific examples of culture-specific constructions of emotion. Some emotional labels specific to particular cultures not only divide the spectrum of human experience differently from the division that we find in scientific psychology, i.e., a model that clearly separates feeling from thought and action, but also divide the emotional spectrum differently. An understandable, but less appreciable, culture-specific label taken from the work of Lutz (1980) is fago, which is a combination of compassion, love and sadness. Some of the other examples that Matsumoto discusses, e.g., itoshii and amae, appear to represent a complex pattern of feelings associated with being connected (engaged) or disconnected (disengaged) with other members of one’s family and community. These culture-specific concepts provide evidence for the existence of emic emotional constructs, suggesting in different cultures that there may be unique patterns of human feeling.