Are Emotions Cross-Culturally Intersubjective? A Japanese Test.

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Are Emotions Cross-Culturally Intersubjective? A
Japanese Test.

• Herm Smith - UM-St. Louis
• Shuuichirou Ike - Teikyo University

For copy of paper, email hwsmith_at_umsl.edu
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Two general approaches

• Ekmans FAST (Facial Affect Scoring Test) of
  primary emotions
• Factor analytic studies of larger sets of complex
  emotions after Russell (1980)

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FAST supposes

• short list of biologically innate and universal
  primary emotions
• High intersubjective ratings cross-culturally
• usually includes seven happiness, anger,
  contempt, disgust, fear, sadness and surprise
  maybe an eighth shame

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FAST Anger example Japan
See http//www.umsl.edu/hsmith/Classes/Soc160/Soc
160NegEmote.html for other FAST stimuli.
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Early Factor analysis results

• Emotions have two bipolar dimensions
• (1) evaluation (pleasure-displeasure) (2)
  activity (aroused-sleepy)
• Circumplex structure
• Redundant potency information (high collinearity
  with Evaluation dimension)

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Russell criticized

• Many non-emotions (e.g., sleep-related) among
  stimuli not accepted as true emotions (see Clore
  Ortony)
• Possible poor translations of emotion words for
  Japanese other languages

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Mackinnon Keating, 1989 Morgan Heise, 1989

• Suggest possible 3-dimensional structure (EPA)
• Partial disconfirmation of circumplexity for
  American and Canadian emotions (by M and K)

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Major Issues

• How many emotional dimensions?
• Is potency dimension redundant?
• Is structure of emotions circumplex?

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Measuring Evaluation Dimension
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Measuring Potency Dimension
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Measuring Arousal Dimension
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Redundancy Issue - Japan
Missing Emotion?
Conclusion Potency information is not redundant
of Evaluation.
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The Circumplex Issue - Japan
Conclusion The circumplex model does not fit the
data.
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A 3-Dimension Model
Five clear primary emotion families appear
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Toward a Theory of Emotions

• The majority of emotions words are dark and
  unpleasant for all humans.
• Dark emotions cluster into three families.
• The primary distinguisher of dark emotions is
  arousal. From most to least relative arousing are
  families centered on anger, then fear, then
  sadness.
• The secondary distinguisher of dark emotions is
  potency, with the order from most potent to most
  impotent being anger, sadness and fear families.

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Toward a Theory of Emotions II

• A smaller set of emotion words cluster into a
  happiness family that is high in pleasure,
  potency and arousal, and a contentment family
  that is relatively slightly pleasant, potent and
  arousing.
• The remaining universal (primary) emotions appear
  to fit within specific emotion families. Contempt
  and disgust are normally part of the anger
  family, surprise an element of the happiness
  family, and shame becomes differentiated as an
  element of the fear cluster.

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Toward a Theory of Emotions III

• Women express larger variations in emotion words
  signifying fear men have larger numbers words
  signifying anger and sadness.
• Women express larger variations in
  happiness-related words, and men in
  security-related words.

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Toward a Theory of Emotions IV

• The expression of any of the emotions in the
  anger family by East Asians is likely to have a
  much more deleterious effects on interpersonal
  relationships, net of stronger Asian motivation
  to maintain group harmony and interpersonal
  relationships.
• This may be part of the reason why Asian women as
  members of the weaker sex find it necessary to
  categorize typically anger-related words into
  fear and sorrow families.
• Japanese men and women appear to live in much
  less emotionally intersubjective worlds than do
  North Americans.

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Size of Cultural Differences

• Japanese-American cultural differences have a
  median of 2.4 times (with quartile hinges of 1.3
  and 3.9 times) that of gender differences on the
  evaluation dimension.
• For potency, Japanese-American differences
  average two times larger than gender differences
  with quartile hinges of 1.4 and 3.5.
• Arousal scale differences between Americans and
  Japanese are larger still 3.2 times larger than
  intra-cultural gender differences, with hinges of
  1.4 and 6.3.