The cultural context of emotional communication.

Emotions are important to our happiness and well-being. Therapeutic work with disturbed or ill patients often centers on bringing a balance to their emotional life and helping them learn to accept and regulate emotions. As people we often ask about the emotional well-being of those that are close to us or people we come in contact with at work. Even the simple “how are you doing” that is so common in American vernacular is an inquiry into the emotional well-being of the person we greet. Perhaps one reason we ask is that we cannot always tell from facial expressions alone the emotional well-being of others. Moreover, the fact that such inquiries are ubiquitous strongly suggests the central role of emotions in our psychological life.

Emotions are precisely suppressed because they convey in powerful ways the psychological state of our inner that is less regulated by culture. The role of psychotherapy is focused on helping the patient to freely express important emotions, and learning how to appropriately convey this information to others in their lives. The utilization of training or counseling groups as vehicles for therapy and communication are aimed at teaching participants to express feelings appropriately and at the same time learn to listen more carefully to the emotional expressions of others. Recognizing emotions accurately is considered an important way to improve communication in industrial work groups. The underlying idea is that communication between people is disrupted unless participants feel free to convey their impressions and feelings honestly and are sensitive to the feelings of relevant others.

Culture impacts the conceptualization of emotions and the regulation and expression of emotional responses. However, although not all cultures have a word for emotion members of all societies manage to convey emotional feelings (Russell, 1991). Still as we saw in chapter 5 language places limits on our understanding by the presence or absence of words that convey finer points in conceptualization. Cross-cultural understanding may depend on the presence or absence of language to convey our emotions and thoughts. Cultures conceive of emotions and regulate the display of expressions in different ways necessitating sensitivity in cross-cultural communication. The fact that emotions are conceived differentially and are dependent on cultural values in turn shapes our behavior and our emotional life.

The varying focus on the self and relationships in individualistic and collectivistic cultures is one important cross-cultural difference. In the Western world emotions are considered self-relevant subjective experiences that tell us important information about our status and self-defined goals. Other cultures centers emotional meaning in the relationship between people. In collectivistic cultures emotions are often explained in terms of relationships to significant others in the family or work place, rather than being defined in personal subjective reactions as in individualistic societies. These cultural differences in understandings suggest that emotion conceptions are not invariant but constructed by the individual over the course of socialization

Kitayama, Shinobu and Markus (1994) explained the cultural shaping of emotional life as determined in part by the ideology of society that defines what is good and moral. Ideology is sifted through the customs and norms of society and enforced by the educational system, legal principles, and norms of social interaction. The salience of the core cultural ideas is produced through experience in the home, in education, work settings, and in religious communities. These cultural influences all combine to produce habitual ways of expressing emotions with concomitants in human physiology, in the expressions of facial responses, and in our subjective feelings. Culture also impacts the specific actions related to our emotions. This comprehensive model understands emotional life by examining the collective context (including linguistic concepts) expressed in the economic and sociopolitical system. Culture also has lasting influences on emotional expression from the largely unconscious processes shaped by norms and social institutions. Nearly all societies encourage the positive emotional expressions that define cultural identity. However, people are also individuals and even in the most regimented and conformist society personal dispositions also contribute to emotional expression.

As noted the biological basis of emotions has been found everywhere and emotions tend to be produced by similar antecedent events in all cultures. Cultures however, determine to a large extent the way emotions are experienced through the appraisal process that is culturally dependent, and through display rules that determine how emotions may be expressed in the company of others. Culture also affects emotional life through the presence or absence of linguistically relevant concepts. The basic emotions that are ubiquitous should be thought of as a template upon which culture write more specific meanings through socialization, norms and social institutions. The universality of the basic emotions does in no way contradict the important role of culture in defining the specific emotional experience that is culturally dependent.

7.4 Toward a positive psychology of emotion: Happiness and well-being.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in building a psychology of positive human functioning (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Cantril (1965) did some of the early surveys on happiness in the world, and data from these and other large scale cross-cultural studies are now deposited in the World Database of Happiness (Veenhoven, 2011). As might be expected there is no universally accepted definition of happiness independent of culture (Harper, Guilbault, Tucker, & Austin, 2007). Nevertheless, happiness consists of both cognitive and affective components identified by the degree to which pleasure dominates in life experiences, and whether basic human needs and wants are met (Veenhoven, 2011). However, pleasure and life satisfaction (meeting the needs and wants of life) are not independent variables and both must be considered in an evaluation of overall happiness (Haller & Hadler, 2006).

Happiness is ubiquitous and experienced to some degree everywhere since we all prefer pleasure and life satisfaction. However, culture determines what is considered to be pleasant and how to satisfy needs (Kitayama & Markus, 2000). Individualistic and collectivistic cultures have different understandings of happiness. In Western cultures happiness is connected to personal achievement and reaching important personally relevant goals, whereas studies in East Asia show that happiness there is perceived to be a consequence of social harmony and positive relationships (Uchida, Norasakkunkit, & Kitayama 2004). Self-esteem lies at the core of happiness and personal well-being in the West whereas self-esteem is less salient in collectivistic societies (Diener & Diener, 1995). Culture shapes our understanding of the very meaning of happiness whether it is to be found in social harmony or more in the self-defined well-being of the individual.

7.4.1 Methodological issues in definitions of happiness and well-being.

The measurement of the well-being construct has presented real challenges to researchers despite the centrality of happiness in human life (Cummins & Lau, 2011). What constitutes well-being is dependent on scientific disciplines, nevertheless having sufficient money is seen as essential to well-being in economics, to good health in medicine, and to broader definitions being offered by the social sciences. Separate measures have been developed to study objective sources of well-being, as well as measuring subjective aspects. The Human Development Index (2007/2008) focuses on tangible variables like wealth and standards of living that define the quality of life. These objective measures however, do not assess subjective aspects of how people feel about their lives. Furthermore, there is no one-to-one relationship between objective and subjective happiness measures since some people can subjectively feel poorly even if they score high on health or wealth. Of the two sources of happiness, the subjective is more important. A person can posses all the riches in the world, but still be depressed.

A major methodological issue is the large number of instruments developed to measure the happiness construct. The presence of so many measures in the literature reflects a lack of common agreement of what constitutes happiness or subjective well-being, and the multiple measures index quite different aspects of the construct (Diener, 2006). Happiness has been used as an umbrella construct to reflect a person’s level of contentment, satisfaction, fulfillment, and even joy (Zwolinski, 2011). However, in much of the literature happiness is seen as a temporary emotional state caused by positive emotional experiences. Researchers need a construct that is reliable and stable over time defined as mood happiness, however some researchers have settled on the term “subjective well-being” as a suitable construct.

Investigators have argued about the existence of a genetic basis of subjective well-being similar to that considered for the optimism bias proposed in chapter 4. From this perspective subjective well-being is seen as managed by a homeostatic system that includes dispositional aspects like the ability to adapt to challenges and positive reflections produced by selective attention. Subjective well-being is also managed through the utilization of money and the presence of close supportive relationships that shield the individual from adversity (Cummins, 2003). However, since subjective mechanisms of well-being are ubiquitous most respondents give upbeat descriptions of their lives wherever the issue has been investigated. Baring serious adverse conditions most humans possess a homeostatically protected mood dominated by personal contentment (Cummins, 2010). The positive mood is generally stable and considered by Cummins to be genetically determined.

Since all people suffer adversity what keeps the homeostasis of subjective well-being steady? Cummins and Lau (2011) argue that both internal and external buffers are in place to help the individual maintain stable positive moods. External buffers are considered the first line of defense and include as noted above the presence of close relationships and money. Psychological research has demonstrated the ubiquitous value of close personal relationships to well-being (Sarason, Sarason, & Pierce, 1990). The support we obtain from close relationships can help overcome many adverse conditions and sustain subjective well-being even in adversity. Also while money can’t buy happiness it allows the rich to be more comfortable even suffering from negative conditions like poor health. Poor people all over the world do not have this buffer and suffer more severe consequences to well-being in adversity. Money serves as a buffer since it is also a resource for better health care or can buy useful diversions like luxuries or vacations to help escape negative reality.

To protect stable positive moods humans also possess internal buffers. Since happiness in the West is connected to achievement, internal buffers help people think differently about personal failures and minimize their impact in life. Often the real impact of suffering is buffered by these devices through religious beliefs that assure the victim of a better afterlife existence and eternal life for the loved one whose death is mourned. In these ways reality is cognitively restructured and perhaps suffering on reflection can be seen as a positive outcome. If a child died young parents might say something to the effect that he was too good for this life, and now is in a “better world”.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 906