Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Leuven Leuven, Belgium.
Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Leuven Leuven, Belgium.
Front Psychol. 2013 Dec 5;4:867. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00867. eCollection 2013.
Three studies tested the idea that people's cultural worlds are structured in ways that promote and highlight emotions and emotional responses that are beneficial in achieving central goals in their culture. Based on the idea that U.S. Americans strive for competitive individualism, while (Dutch-speaking) Belgians favor a more egalitarian variant of individualism, we predicted that anger and shame, as well as their associated responses, would be beneficial to different extents in these two cultural contexts. A questionnaire study found that cultural practices promote beneficial emotions (anger in the United States, shame in Belgium) and avoid harmful emotions (shame in the United States): emotional interactions were perceived to occur more or less frequently to the extent that they elicited culturally beneficial or harmful emotions. Similarly, a cultural product analysis showed that popular children's books from the United States and Belgium tend to portray culturally beneficial emotions more than culturally harmful emotions. Finally, a word-association study of the shared cultural meanings surrounding anger and shame provided commensurate evidence at the level of the associated response. In each language network, anger and shame were imbued with meanings that reflected the cultural significance of the emotion: while culturally consistent emotions carried relatively stronger connotations of emotional yielding (e.g., giving in to anger and aggressing against the offender in the United States), culturally inconsistent emotions carried relatively stronger connotations of emotional containment (e.g., a stronger emphasis on suppressing or transforming shame in the United States).
三项研究检验了这样一种观点，即人们的文化世界是按照促进和突出在实现文化核心目标方面有益的情绪和情绪反应的方式构建的。基于这样一种观点，即美国人追求竞争的个人主义，而（讲荷兰语的）比利时人则更倾向于个人主义的一种更平等的变体，我们预测，愤怒和羞耻，以及它们的相关反应，在这两种文化背景下会在不同程度上有益。一项问卷调查研究发现，文化实践促进有益的情绪（美国的愤怒，比利时的羞耻），避免有害的情绪（美国的羞耻）：情绪互动被认为或多或少地发生，程度取决于它们引发有益或有害的文化情绪。同样，对来自美国和比利时的流行儿童书籍的文化产品分析表明，它们往往更倾向于描绘有益的文化情绪，而不是有害的文化情绪。最后，一项关于愤怒和羞耻的共享文化意义的联想研究在相关反应层面提供了相应的证据。在每种语言网络中，愤怒和羞耻都被赋予了反映情绪文化意义的含义：虽然文化一致的情绪带有相对更强的情感屈服的内涵（例如，在美国屈服于愤怒并对冒犯者采取攻击行为），但文化不一致的情绪带有相对更强的情感控制的内涵（例如，在美国更加强调抑制或转化羞耻）。
