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Emotions Across Cultures: Objectivity and Cultural Divergence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Extract

One of the themes of this lecture series has to do with the bearing of radical cultural divergencies on the issue of whether or not there is an invariant human nature. Put starkly, the options are between: first, man as a socio-cultural product, which entails that human nature must vary significantly across divergent cultures; second, man as a biological product, which entails (racist theories aside) that human nature is universal and invariant, impervious to cultural influence; and third, man as a mixture or synthesis of these two options.

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Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1984

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References

1 Winch, Peter, ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, in Rationality, Wilson, B. (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), 81 (78111).Google Scholar

2 On the first option, see Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, The Notebooks on Primitive Mentality (London: Harper, 1978), e.g. p. 189Google Scholar;; for discussion of the second option, see Needham, Rodney, ‘Inner States as Universals: Sceptical Reflections on Human Nature’, in Indigenous Psychologies, Heelas, P. and Lock, A. (eds) (London: Academic Press, 1981), 6578.Google Scholar

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5 Certainly most psychologists adopt this view: see, for example, Howard Leventhal, ‘The Integration of Emotion and Cognition: A View From the Perceptual-motor Theory of Emotion’, in Affect and Cognition, Clark, M. and Fiske, S. (eds) (London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1982) 122123 (121156).Google Scholar

6 Needham, , op. cit. 76Google Scholar. There is much more to be said about identifying and comparing emotions across or within cultures than can be included here. An obvious point is that it is as difficult to hold that there are no natural signs as it is to hold the opposite view: one requires natural signs to assess the matter. The importance of conventionality, however, is suggested by cases such as the following: Yanomamö wives are often physically hurt by their husbands, but treat this as a sign of endearment (see Heelas, Paul, ‘Anthropology, Violence and Catharsis’, in Aggression and Violence, Marsh, P. and Campbell, A. (eds) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), 4761Google Scholar, for further discussion of this and related matters). On the other hand Paul Ekman ((ed.) Emotion in the Human Face (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982))Google Scholar has argued that certain facial expressions do indeed provide natural signs (for difficulties with his approach see Heelas, Paul, ‘Anger and Aggression Across Cultures’Google Scholar, paper delivered at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, 1982). Yet another issue is that natural signs of a biological kind, e.g. involving physiological differentiation, tend to be non-specific, do not appear to be directly ‘about’ emotions but about what I later call ‘perturbations’, and cannot easily be linked to particular emotions given that these have to be picked up by cultural, not biological, signs.

7 See Hollis, Martin, ‘Reason and Ritual’, in Rationality, Wilson, B. (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), 231 (221239).Google Scholar

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21 Howell, ibid. 135.

22 Howell, ibid. 137; see also Howell, , op. cit. 241280.Google Scholar

23 Howell, ibid. (1981), 140.

24 Coulter, Jeff, The Social Construction of Mind (London: Macmillan, 1979), 132.Google Scholar

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26 Howell, ibid. 143.

27 See Heelas, Paul, ‘Indigenous Representations of the Emotions: the Case of the Chewong’, Journal ofthe Anthropological Society of Oxford XIV (1984), 87103.Google Scholar

28 Howell, ibid. 142.

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34 Schachter, ibid. For additional evidence see Clark, and Fiske, , op. cit.Google Scholar; London, H. and Nisbett, R. (eds) Thought and Feeling, Cognitive alteration of feeling states (Chicago: Aldine, 1974)Google Scholar; Schachter, and Singer, 's ‘Comments on the Maslach and Marshall-Zimbardo Experiments’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979), 989995CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and work in, e.g. social learning theory and cognitive therapy. I have surveyed much of this evidence—supporting exogenous as well as endogenous theory—in ‘Anthropological Perspectives on Violence: Universals and Particulars’, Zygon Vol. 18, No. 4 (1984) (375404)Google Scholar. Perhaps the most powerful evidence is provided by the fact that rival theorists very rarely deny, in toto, the validity of whichever camp they are opposed to.

35 Schachter, Stanley, The Psychology of Affiliation (Standford: Stanford University Press, 1959), 123129.Google Scholar

36 Gordon, Robert, ‘Emotion Labelling and Cognition’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour No. 2 (1979), 130 (125–136).Google Scholar

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38 The fact that Schachter reports that ‘subjects in the epinephrine ignorant condition are significantly angrier than subjects in the placebo condition’ is good evidence that mere exposure to angry contexts does not automatically result in ‘anger’ reports (Schachter, , op. cit. (1981), 19Google Scholar). Arousal is important; cognitive processes are not so important as is implied by Gordon.

39 Necessary but not sufficient because it is generally held that physiological arousal or other forms of physiological activity are too undifferentiated and indeterminate to generate particular emotions (see footnote 51, below), and that cognitions alone do not result in emotions (see Schachter, ibid. 4).

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41 Leventhal, , op. cit. (1980), 156157.Google Scholar

42 Leventhal, ibid. 160.

43 Leventhal, ibid. 168.

44 Leventhal, ibid. 162.

45 See footnote 6.

46 Leventhal, ibid. 192. More generally, evidence for endogenous theories (bearing on triggering processes, behaviours associated with ‘emotions’, consequences of ‘emotional’ activity, brain processes and structures, as well as the issue of differentiation), can be drawn from many domains of inquiry. These include psychosurgery, electroconvulsive therapy and brain stimulation, the use of psychotropic drugs, the study of child development, facial expressions, aggression, anxiety, etc., and investigation of hormonal, limbic, etc., systems. A useful introduction is Moyer, K.'s (ed.) Physiology of Aggression and Implications for Control: an Anthology of Readings (New York: Raven Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Or, for a particular emotion, see Gray, J., ‘Anxiety as a Paradigm Case of Emotion’, British Medical Bulletin 37, No. 2 (1981), 193197.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

47 Leventhal, ibid. (1980), 191–193.

48 Leventhal, ibid. 192.

49 Coulter, , op. cit. 131.Google Scholar

50 Shibles, Warren, Emotion (Wisconsin: The Language Press, 1978), 3.Google Scholar

51 Berkowitz, Lenorad, A Survey of Social Psychology (London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), 345346Google Scholar; Marshall, G. and Zimbardo, P., ‘Affective Consequences of Inadequately Explained Physiological Arousal’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979), 923CrossRefGoogle Scholar (970–985); Leff, Julian, ‘The Cross-cultural Study of Emotions’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry I (1977), 324 (317–350)Google Scholar; Weiner, Bernard, ‘The Emotional Consequences of Causal Attributions’, in Affect and Cognition, op. cit. (footnote 5), 206Google Scholar (185–209). As George Mandler summarizes the situation, ‘The notion that there was something dual about emotional states dates back to Aristotle who, in De Anima, distinguished between the matter and the form (or idea) of emotions. Presumably the former could be identified as the visceral component and the latter as the psychological experience’ (Mind and Emotion (London: John Wiley, 1975), 94.Google Scholar

52 Leff, Julian, ‘Culture and the Differentiation of Emotional States’, British Journal of Psychiatry CXXIII (1973), 304 (299–306)Google Scholar. This conclusion has to take a tentative form because the role of Schachterian ‘appraisal’ or cultural learning models is not easy to establish. My earlier emphasis on the absence or prsence of emotion words only provides a crude approach. In a hypothetical culture, a member could experience anger without knowing that word if another person did something, in terms of a general system of meanings, which unjustifiably affected the member's status (for example, if the other person breaks rules to unfairly put our member down). But the point remains that Chewong emotion-denying rules are the rules of that culture's moral code. There is no reason for Chewong to feel angry, other than at the perturbational level, if frustrated by what is culturally imposed. (See Kemper, Theodore, A Social Interactional Theory of Emotions (Chichester: John Wiley, 1978)Google Scholar for what is probably the most detailed analysis of cultural learning models).

53 See footnote 46.

54 See Ekman, (ed.), op. cit. (1982)Google Scholar, or, at the popular level, an article in the Daily Telegraph (13 09 1984)Google Scholar with the title, ‘Let a Smile be Your Umbrella, Say Scientists’.

55 Burton, Richard, The Anatomy of Melancholy (London: J. Dent, 1972; original 1621), 137.Google Scholar