Invitation to Psychology

458 ChapTER 13 Emotion, Stress, and Health

categories of perception are suspended—at twilight,

in the brush, watching fires glow without heat

(Levy, 1984). English­speaking people can identify

a bittersweet experience or feel the mixed emotions

of pleasure and regret in nostalgia. But English lacks

an emotion word that is central to inhabitants of the

tiny Micronesian atoll of Ifaluk: fago, translated as

“compassion/love/sadness,” which reflects the sad

feeling one has when a loved one is absent or in

need, and the pleasurable sense of compassion in be­

ing able to care and help (Lutz, 1988).

Do these interesting linguistic differences

mean that Germans are more likely than others

to actually feel schadenfreude, the Japanese to feel

hagaii, Tahitians to feel mehameha, and English

speakers to feel nostalgia? Or are they just more

willing to give these blended emotions a single

name? Most people in all cultures are apparently

capable of feeling the emotions that have distinc­

tive physiological hallmarks in the brain, face, and

nervous system. But people in different cultures

might indeed differ in their ability to experience

emotional blends and variations.

In Chapter 7, we noted that a prototype is a

typical representative of a class of things. People

everywhere consider some emotions to be pro­

totypical examples of the concept emotion: Most

people will say that anger and sadness are more

representative of an emotion than irritability and

nostalgia are. Prototypical emotions are reflected

in the emotion words that young children learn

first: happy, sad, mad, and scared. But as children

develop, they begin to draw emotional distinc­

tions that are less prototypical and more specific

to their language and culture, such as ecstatic,

depressed, hostile, or anxious (Hupka, Lenton, &

Hutchison, 1999; Shaver, Wu, & Schwartz, 1992).

In this way, they come to experience the nuances

of emotional feeling that their cultures emphasize.

Culture also influences the causes of emotion

and shapes their expression. Anger may be universal,

but the way it is experienced will vary from culture

to culture—whether it feels good or bad, useful or

destructive. And cultures determine much of what

people feel emotional about. For example, disgust

is universal, but the content of what produces dis­

gust changes as an infant matures, and it varies

across cultures (Pole, 2013; Rozin, Lowery, & Ebert,

1994). People in some cultures learn to become

disgusted by bugs (which other people find beauti­

ful or tasty), unfamiliar sexual practices, dirt, death,

“contamination” by a handshake with a stranger, or

particular foods (e.g., meat if they are vegetarian;

pork if they are Muslims or Orthodox Jews).

Communicating Emotions

Suppose that someone dear to you died. Would

you cry, and if so, would you do it alone or in

public? Your answer will depend in part on your

culture’s display rules for emotion (Ekman et al.,

1987; Gross, 1998). In some cultures, grief is

expressed by weeping; in others, by tearless res­

ignation; and in still others by dance, drink, and

song. Once you feel an emotion, how you express

it is rarely a matter of “I say what I feel.” You may

be obliged to disguise what you feel. You may wish

you could feel what you say.

display rules Social
and cultural rules that
regulate when, how,
and where a person may
express (or suppress)
emotions.

Around the world, the cultural rules for expressing emotions differ. The display rule for

a formal Japanese wedding portrait is “no direct expressions of emotion,” but not every

member of this family has learned that rule yet.