Emotion & Cognition Lecture 1
What are emotions? General agreement on 3 components:
o Phenomenal experience: becoming aware of what you feel
o Physiological pattern: bodily reaction (racing heart, dilated
pupils)
o Verbal or nonverbal expression of emotion
Disagreement of the order of these components
Expressions are distinct states of the mind, innate
Ekman: 6 basic emotional expressions: fear, anger, disgust, joy,
neutral, sadness, surprise
o “Emotions are universal across cultures”
o New Guinea study: pick pictures fitting a story → 6 basic
emotions were recognized universally
Criticism on Ekman’s studies
Russell: “there is low agreement about the classification of
expressions”
o New Guinea study: low ecological validity (very remote place,
maybe they never saw a picture before), only Western facial
expressions
o Low overlap between phenomenal experience and facial
expression
o Arbitrary categorization (6)
o Emotions are not in separate boxes, but dimensional (scale)
Elfenbein & Ambady: “Emotions are universal to a limited degree”
o Different “dialects” in each culture
, o People are better at recognizing emotions in people from
their own group (In-group advantage)
o The in-group advantage can be overcome by exposure to
different groups
Why differences across cultures?
Display rules: inhibit people from showing certain emotions (in
Japan anger is rarely expressed, in the US store workers will
approach you with a big smile)
o Display rules shape emotion: Friesen & Matsumoto, Japanese
and American people watch a stressful film alone vs with
someone else → results: Japanese adapted their expressions
to hide negative emotions, but more likely to express surprise
Emotions are flexible and may not necessarily express
true feelings
Expression based on specific affect program: people from the in-
group know better how to read other in-group members’ emotional
expressions
Culture
Kitayama et al.: Positive emotions are more important for
Americans, in Japan balance is important → positive and negative
emotions are correlated, socially engaging emotions are most
important
Masuda & Nisbett: experiment with pictures, Japanese more
focused on contextual information and relationships than
Americans
o Americans tend to ignore contextual information
o Surrounding people’s emotions influenced Japanese
perceptions about the center person
2
What are emotions? General agreement on 3 components:
o Phenomenal experience: becoming aware of what you feel
o Physiological pattern: bodily reaction (racing heart, dilated
pupils)
o Verbal or nonverbal expression of emotion
Disagreement of the order of these components
Expressions are distinct states of the mind, innate
Ekman: 6 basic emotional expressions: fear, anger, disgust, joy,
neutral, sadness, surprise
o “Emotions are universal across cultures”
o New Guinea study: pick pictures fitting a story → 6 basic
emotions were recognized universally
Criticism on Ekman’s studies
Russell: “there is low agreement about the classification of
expressions”
o New Guinea study: low ecological validity (very remote place,
maybe they never saw a picture before), only Western facial
expressions
o Low overlap between phenomenal experience and facial
expression
o Arbitrary categorization (6)
o Emotions are not in separate boxes, but dimensional (scale)
Elfenbein & Ambady: “Emotions are universal to a limited degree”
o Different “dialects” in each culture
, o People are better at recognizing emotions in people from
their own group (In-group advantage)
o The in-group advantage can be overcome by exposure to
different groups
Why differences across cultures?
Display rules: inhibit people from showing certain emotions (in
Japan anger is rarely expressed, in the US store workers will
approach you with a big smile)
o Display rules shape emotion: Friesen & Matsumoto, Japanese
and American people watch a stressful film alone vs with
someone else → results: Japanese adapted their expressions
to hide negative emotions, but more likely to express surprise
Emotions are flexible and may not necessarily express
true feelings
Expression based on specific affect program: people from the in-
group know better how to read other in-group members’ emotional
expressions
Culture
Kitayama et al.: Positive emotions are more important for
Americans, in Japan balance is important → positive and negative
emotions are correlated, socially engaging emotions are most
important
Masuda & Nisbett: experiment with pictures, Japanese more
focused on contextual information and relationships than
Americans
o Americans tend to ignore contextual information
o Surrounding people’s emotions influenced Japanese
perceptions about the center person
2
