Culture and Emotion

Abstract

In this article, the authors integrate the seemingly disparate literature on culture and emotion by offering a biocultural model of emotion that offers three premises heretofore not introduced in the literature: (1) emotions need to be distinguished from other affective phenomena, (2) different types of emotions exist, and (3) within any emotion different domains can be studied. Previous controversies have occurred because writers have called all affective states “emotion” without regard to the type or domain of emotion sampled. The authors argue that not all affective states should be called emotion, that emotions that may be biologically innate are different than those that are not, and that different domains of emotion are more relatively influenced by biology or culture. The authors offer researchers a terminology—biological versus cultural emotions, Priming Reactions, Subjective Experience, and Emotional Meanings—provide hypotheses concerning the relative contributions of biology and culture, review the available literature that supports those hypotheses, and argue that the literature can be somewhat neatly integrated into a cohesive whole. The authors contend that the relative contribution of biological and cultural factors to emotion depends on what emotion is being studied and the specific domain of emotion assessed. While the authors acknowledge that their delineations are not the only or the best delineations that can or should be used, they contend that some kind of delineations should be made and can help to synthesize and integrate a large and seemingly disparate, contradictory literature. The authors offer theirs as a first step in this effort.