Are Emotions Cross-Culturally Intersubjective? A Japanese Test.

Herm Smith - UM-St. Louis

Shuuichirou Ike - Teikyo University

For copy of paper, email: hwsmith@umsl.edu

Two general approaches:

Ekman’s FAST (Facial Affect Scoring Test) of primary emotionsFactor analytic studies of larger sets of complex emotions after Russell (1980)

FAST supposes:

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

FAST Anger example: Japan

See http://www.umsl.edu/~hsmith/Classes/Soc160/Soc160NegEmote.html for other FAST stimuli.

Early Factor analysis results:

Emotions have two bipolar dimensions:

(1) evaluation (pleasure-displeasure); (2) activity (aroused-sleepy)

Circumplex structureRedundant potency information (high collinearity with Evaluation dimension)

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

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)

Major Issues

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

Measuring Evaluation Dimension

Measuring Potency Dimension

Measuring Arousal Dimension

Redundancy Issue - Japan

Missing Emotion?

Conclusion: Potency information is not redundant of Evaluation.

The Circumplex Issue - Japan

Conclusion: The circumplex model does not fit the data.

A 3-Dimension Model

Five clear primary emotion families appear

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.

Toward a Theory of Emotions IIA 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.

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.

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.

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.