456 ChapTER 13 Emotion, Stress, and Health
The appraisals that people make in particular
situations depend in part on their culture. Japanese
and Americans tend to differ in how they explain
their errors and successes, and their emotions dif
fer accordingly. Japanese are more likely to blame
themselves when something goes wrong and as a
result to experience shame, whereas Americans are
more likely to blame others and experience anger.
Americans are more likely to take credit for their
successes and feel proud, whereas Japanese are
more likely to regard a success as the result of the
situation and opportunity—and feel lucky (Imada &
Ellsworth, 2011).
Cognitions and physiology are inextricably
linked in the subjective experience of emotion,
and it’s a twoway relationship: Thoughts affect
emotions, and emotional states influence thoughts
(Fairholme et al., 2009; Keltner, Ellsworth, &
Edwards, 1993). Blaming others for your woes can
make you feel angry, but once you are angry you
may be more inclined to think the worst of other
people’s motives. The complicated mix of emo
tions that people feel when they have “disappoint
ing wins” (outcomes that were not as good as they
had expected) or “relieving losses” (bad outcomes
that could have been worse) shows how power
fully thoughts affect emotional responses.
An infant’s primitive emotions do not have
much mental sophistication: “Hey, I’m mad
because no one is feeding me!” As a child’s cere
bral cortex matures, however, cognitions becomemore complex, and thus so do emotions: “Hey,
I’m mad because this situation is entirely unfair!”
Some emotions, such as shame, guilt, and remorse,
depend completely on the maturation of higher
cognitive capacities and do not occur until a child
is 2 or 3 years old (and never in some people).
These selfconscious emotions require the emer
gence of a sense of self and the ability to perceive
that you have behaved badly or let down another
person (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton,
1994; Tangney & Tracy, 2012).Thoughts affect emotions. Who will be happier: an athlete who wins a second-place silver medal or one who
wins a third-place bronze? Won’t it be the silver medalist? Nope. Second-place winners usually compare them-
selves to the gold medalist and see themselves as “losers.” But third-place winners compare themselves to those
who did worse than they and are happy that they earned a medal at all (Medvec, Madey, & Gilovich, 1995). After
a European swimming competition, silver medalist Vitaly Romanovich of Russia (left) clearly felt grumpier than
the gold- and bronze-medal winners. He couldn’t even bring himself to display his medal!Children need to be old enough to have a sense of self
before they can feel the moral emotions of shame, guilt,
or remorse.