In your opinion do you think that the difference between individualistic or collectivist

types of culture have any influence in the feeling and expression of emotions?

Max Knowles
gdk2
PBS1

Emotions are acute biological responses bringing about shifts in our physiological and
cognitive states. In comparison to moods which are more general and often ambiguous in
origin, emotions are more intense and precisely evoked in response to stimuli. The term
‘feelings’ is also used to describe similar phenomena to emotions; where feelings are always
conscious emotions be conscious or unconscious. Both the experience and expression of
emotions may be culturally influenced, and one common way to describe different cultures is
the individualism-collectivism dichotomy. Upon reviewing the literature it seems that
individualist cultures (valuing independence) may encourage the normative expression of
emotions, whereas collectivist cultures (placing value on interdependence) may encourage
emotional suppression in pursuit of maintaining group harmony (Matsumoto et al., 2008).
More recently, psychologists have also investigated how culture governs emotional
responses to music and song lyrics (a key cultural product), providing key insights into how
culture may influence the cognitive mechanisms that surround emotional processing
(Barradas & Sakka, 2022).

In order to understand how individualist-collectivist differences can influence how we

experience and express emotions, it is important to explore the various approaches to
emotion in some detail. Emotions, according to Paul Ekman, serve as automatic appraisals
of stimuli that are the result of evolution interacting with our personal experiences (Ekman &
Scherer, 2009). Ekman’s research focused largely on facial expression and their meaning
across cultures and proposed seven universal emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear,
sadness, surprise and happiness (Ekman & Rosenberg, 1997). The suggestion of basic
human emotions which translate across cultures would advocate for a phylogenetic theory of
emotions, developing evolutionarily. Throughout the literature it is widely noted that Charles
Darwin proposed universal facial expressions increased chances of survival. This is because
they provide appropriate responses to potentially threatening or beneficial events in the
environment. They also signal our intentions to others, perhaps facilitating intimate and
complex social relationships between individuals. Robert Plutchik draws our attention to
various potential adaptive scenarios as the source of emotions. For instance, Plutchik talks
of rejection as a basic riddance behaviour intended to expel or prevent the incorporation of
something potentially harmful, this behaviour corresponds to the physiological changes
brought about by disgust (Plutchik et al., 2009). For instance, disgust is often characterised
by feelings of nausea, and the contraction of nose and mouth (Chapman & Anderson, 2012).
This highlights the avoidant and rejecting nature of the emotion, hypothetically preventing
any harm that may come from engaging with the stimulus, such as bitter foods. Similar
evolutionary explanations are applicable across all emotions.

Individualist cultures are characterised by the emphasis they place on independence,

personal agency and the individual. In theory, then, behaviour and emotional expression in
an individualist culture should tend to reflect an individual’s own personality and attitudes.
Examples of individualist cultures include the USA, Sweden, Australia and Germany. By
contrast, collectivist cultures are characterised by interdependence and the belonging-based
identity that they encourage. They emphasise social networks, group goals and solidarity
and therefore behaviour and emotional expression should be more subject to social norms
and roles in collectivist cultures than individualist cultures. Some examples of collectivist
cultures are China, Portugal, Indonesia, and Venezuela.

While an evolutionary approach would suggest that human emotions are universal, their
experience and expression may change in different social contexts. Different cultures have
heterogenous display rules, governing the expression of different emotions in contrasting
ways. Display rules are overlearned customs about emotional expression governing how,
when and where to express emotions (Ekman & Scherer, 2009). These vary greatly across
cultures and are aptly demonstrated by a 1972 by Ekman investigating cultural differences in
emotions between Japanese and American participants. The participants showed no cultural
differences responding to stressful stimuli when alone. However, when they were exposed to
stressful stimuli alongside a higher-status experimenter, Japanese participants were more
likely to smile in order to mask their emotional state. Ekman suggests that this reveals a
display rule of masking emotions around esteemed figures in the collectivist Japanese
culture. This contrasts the individualist American culture as American participants were less
likely to mask their emotional expression (Ekman & Cole (ed.), 1972). More contemporary
research by Matsumoto et al. (2008) also focuses on display rules. Where Ekman’s study
used only 50 participants, Matsumoto’s study analysed responses from over 5000
individuals from 32 countries, rather than just two. Matsumoto et al. used participants’
responses to hypothetical situations involving 21 different target interactants (i.e., a father, or
a professor) in two overarching settings: public and private. Participants were asked what
they should do if they felt each of the seven proposed universal emotions towards the target
interactants. It was found that cultures differed in terms of overall emotional expressivity.
Individualism was positively correlated with higher expressivity norms; however, this was
emotion specific, and the effect was most prominent with happiness and surprise. It may be
that there is a difference in display rules between individualist cultures and collectivist
cultures which, to some extent, inhibit those in collectivist cultures from expressing certain
emotions. Beyond display rules, another proposed explanation of this finding is extraversion,
given that individualism is positively correlated with greater country-level rates of
extraversion (Hofstede & McCrae, 2004 in Matsumoto et al., 2008). Greater rates of
extraversion would suggest a generally more socially expressive individualist population.
Therefore, it may not be the widely proposed display rules hypothesis but a personality-
based explanation that explains the differences in emotional expression between
individualist and collectivist cultures. While this study has a large sample size and analyses
multiple cultures which strengthens the ecological validity of the evidence, this finding only
really proposes a correlation for happiness and surprise and questions the cultural
differences regarding other emotions. Moreover, Matsumoto et al. assessed display rules
verbally and therefore the study cannot account for preverbal display rules which may be
require minimal consciousness and may become unconscious (Matsumoto & Lee, 1993 in
Matsumoto et al., 2008). Finally, in both Ekman (1972) and Matsumoto et al. (2008) the
samples used consisted solely of university students and therefore we cannot infer the
stability of these findings across different generations. It seems that, while do seem to be
relationships between individualism-collectivism and emotional expression, the research is
flawed and does not provide substantial clarification regarding the role of culture in emotional
experience.

A more unique avenue of research into the interaction of emotions and culture is looking at
how the influence of music and lyrics on emotions and psychological mechanisms varies
across cultures. Indeed, emotional reactions to music seem to occur reasonably often, a
figure at around 55-65% of all listening experiences (Juslin et al., 2008 in Barradas & Sakka,
2022). Barradas and Saka (2022) investigated how emotional reactions to music with and
without lyrics differed between these two cultures, using one song from each culture
(translated where appropriate). Portugal is a relatively collectivist culture whereas Sweden is
a more individualist culture. It was found that Portuguese participants were more emotionally
influenced than Swedish participants by song lyrics, being most impacted in terms of general
sadness as well as nostalgia. By contrast, when they were affected (more rarely) Swedish
participants were predominantly influenced in terms of surprise (Barradas & Sakka, 2022).
The self-reports also revealed that lyrics led to higher ratings of emotional contagion, visual
imagery, and episodic memory in the Portuguese group. It is suggested that potential
recollection of explicit past memories, as well as empathy for the lyricist (as suggested by
emotional contagion) may have caused the higher rates of nostalgia and sadness for the
Portuguese group in comparison to the Swedish group (Barradas & Sakka, 2022). The study
as a whole highlights the cross-cultural differences in the experiences of emotions evoked by
listening to lyrical music between an individualist and collectivist culture. However, it is
important to note that the study was based on self-report techniques and therefore demand
characteristics and social desirability may have influenced results if participants guessed the
aims of the study. Additionally, the mean age – 24.9 – was again relatively young and age
may dictate to a certain extent the influence of cultural products. For instance, the genre of a
piece of music may be treated differently by different generations, and this may influence the
engagement of emotional mechanisms.

Beyond the methodology of the research into the impact of cultural variables on emotions, I
want to briefly criticise the notion of collectivist and individualist cultures. It is surely too
simplistic to bifurcate something as fundamentally nuanced as culture. While it is true that
different cultures place varying amounts of emphasis on personal achievement and social
goals, on the individual and on the group, these variables are not always so categorical. In
reality, cultures exist on a spectrum of different traits, with individualism-collectivism as just a
single trait (which itself can be reduced into further spectra). This cultural dimension is
evidently related to differences on individuals’ emotional experiences and expression
(Barradas & Sakka, 2022; Ekman & Cole (ed.), 1972; Matsumoto et al., 2008; Ramzan &
Amjad, 2017) and there do seem to be plausible factors such as display rules, and other
cognitive processes like memory that may be culturally influenced. Nevertheless, I believe
that there is an evident need for further research in this field in order to elucidate how culture
and emotion interact. It seems that they are related, but it is not clear at this point just how
this relationship manifests itself.
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