ABSTRACT

Emotional experience is culturally constructed. In this review, we discuss evidence that cultural differences in emotions are purposeful, helping an individual to meet the mandate of being a good person in their culture. We also discuss research showing that individual’s fit to the cultural emotion norm is associated with well-being, and suggest that this link may be explained by the fact that normative emotions meet the cultural mandate. Finally, we discuss research that sheds light on some of the collective processes of emotion construction: social interactions and emotion representations are geared towards promoting emotions that are conducive to the cultural mandate. In conclusion, we suggest that individuals become part of their culture by “doing emotions” in a way that is consistent with the cultural mandate, and that in intercultural interactions, emotions can be literally “at cross purposes”: each person’s emotions are constructed to fit the purposes of their own culture.

摘要

情感体验是文化建构的。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了证据，证明情感上的文化差异是有目的的，有助于个人达到在其文化中成为好人的使命。我们还讨论了表明个人符合文化情感规范与幸福相关的研究，并建议这种联系可以由规范情感符合文化要求这一事实来解释。最后，我们讨论了一些揭示情感建构的集体过程的研究：社交互动和情感表征旨在促进有益于文化使命的情感。总之，我们建议个人通过与文化使命相一致的方式“行事”来成为其文化的一部分，