Emotions as a Reflection of Culture

The ability to speak articulately appeared in the ancestors of modern humans about 1.7 to 2 million years ago. Since then, we haven’t stopped expressing our thoughts, ideas, feelings, and, of course, emotions. Humans have an incredibly rich vocabulary to describe what we feel, and these words are extremely diverse. Think, for example, of those viral lists of words that exist in some languages but not in Russian.

Take the Swedish word resfeber, which means the anxiety you feel before a trip. Or the Finnish myötähäpeä—that feeling of embarrassment you get when someone else does something foolish, but you’re the one who feels ashamed. There’s also awumbuk, a word used by the Baining people of Papua New Guinea to describe a kind of social “hangover”—the sense of being drained and unmotivated for days after exhausting guests leave.

None of these words exist in Russian, but who can argue that similar feelings don’t exist? And nearly every language in the world has its own words for basic emotions: fear, anger, love.

How Do Emotions Relate to Cultural Boundaries?

Are human emotions universal, or do they differ across cultures? These questions are far from new. In fact, early scientific research assumed that, just as primary colors form the basis for all other shades, there is a basic set of primary emotions from which all other feelings arise.

But then it turned out that, for example, the English language recognizes six colors in the rainbow, while Russian recognizes seven—and emotions are just as complex.

“I Don’t Understand You”

Let’s return to Papua New Guinea. In the 1970s, researchers reported that people from an isolated cultural group there could correctly identify emotional expressions on the faces of Westerners in photographs at rates higher than chance. This finding caused a stir in scientific circles and was seen as proof that people everywhere understand emotions the same way.

However, collaborative work among psychologists, neuroscientists, and anthropologists has since shown that our cultural upbringing can significantly influence how we express and experience emotions.

For example, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, together with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, studied the variability of emotional expression in spoken language. Their work, one of the largest cross-cultural studies of emotional expression to date, was based on vocabulary data from 2,474 world languages.

To explore how emotions are expressed, the researchers used computational tools to create a vast database of linguistic cases where a single word has multiple meanings. For instance, the Russian word for “hand” can mean just the palm or the entire limb from shoulder to fingertips. Or the English word “funny,” which can mean both “amusing” and “strange.”

The team then used this database to create networks of related words across 20 language families, allowing them to compare humanity’s emotional vocabulary. The study found significant differences in how emotions are conceptualized in different cultures—there were three times more variations in emotional terms than in terms used to describe color.

For example, in some languages, the word for “surprise” is closely linked to words for fear, while in others, it’s associated with more pleasant states like happiness. Interestingly, some Austronesian languages combine the concept of love—a typically positive emotion—with pity, which is usually negative.

Written on the Face

What about facial expressions? While facial expressions of emotion are initially universal, over time they become culturally differentiated.

To confirm this, researcher David Matsumoto’s team studied thousands of photographs taken at the 2004 Athens Olympics, right after matches ended. They were especially interested in how quickly (and whether) people’s initial emotions changed on their faces after their favorites won or lost.

The results showed real cultural differences. Athletes from collectivist cultures, such as China, tended to mask their facial expressions more than athletes from individualist cultures, like the UK. The study also found that people from wealthier and more densely populated countries were generally less concerned with masking their emotional expressions than those from less populated and developing countries.

The takeaway? An individual’s emotional expressions can be both universal and culture-specific. It’s not so simple after all.

Five Key Questions About Culture, Emotions, and the Culture of Emotions

How similarly do people perceive emotions?

Very differently—and you don’t have to be a scientist to see it. If we all felt the same way, even within a single culture, just imagine how many interpersonal conflicts would never arise. Now think about the last time you argued with someone because they didn’t understand your feelings—feelings that seemed simple and obvious to you, but were completely foreign to your opponent.

Another interesting point: not all cultures see emotions as something inside us. Many believe emotions are actually interactions between people—something we do with each other. In these cultures, when you love or are angry with someone, you don’t experience the feeling alone; you live it together.

Why are emotions a cultural phenomenon?

Even though the mechanisms of feelings and emotions are biological, we learn to experience them through the lens of our culture as we grow up. We’re taught that it’s good to restrain emotions—or, on the contrary, to smile widely to show friendliness. As children, we may only feel polar states (either good or bad) and don’t think about how to express these feelings outwardly. But we start to think about it every time an adult corrects or restrains our impulses.

For example, in many Western cultures, shame is seen as negative. In Eastern cultures, however, shame is on par with embarrassment and modesty—undeniably positive emotions that show a person has tact and decency.

How does culture influence emotions?

As mentioned above, emotions are largely physiological reactions of the brain and body, but not only that. Yes, our bodies chemically react to things happening around us, but this reaction alone isn’t an emotion. Every emotion has a social context because we live in society. Usually, emotions arise not by themselves, but in the context of interacting with the world and other people.

Even if we feel anger about our own actions and the emotion seems self-directed, in reality it’s still outwardly focused. We’re angry that we did something wrong, and maybe it affected our relationships, our work, or the impression we wanted to make on others. So our personal emotion is still embedded in a social context.

Does a person’s perception or expression of emotions change when they move to a different culture?

Absolutely—otherwise, the concept of “culture shock” wouldn’t exist. Of course, it’s not just about emotions, but anyone who has lived in a different culture for a long time has probably felt confused or even rejected at first. You might think your feelings are just natural reactions to your environment, but then find yourself in a new culture and realize they don’t fit the norms there at all.

Over time, as you interact with enough people from the new culture and get their feedback, you accumulate new experience in expressing emotions. It’s a slow process: immigrant minorities often need more than one generation to adapt to the norms of a new culture.

When interacting with people from different cultures, understanding that everyone’s emotions are connected to their own society, norms, and values can help us understand each other better.

How else can understanding other people’s emotional lives help us?

Knowing alternative ways to experience and express emotions gives us a better understanding of our own feelings. It also offers a new perspective.

For example, the feeling of shame isn’t so unbearable that we must always turn it into anger. Shame is only unbearable if you believe you should never feel it and must always feel good—an expectation and norm of Western culture.

If you can separate yourself from this cultural rule, you can live even with shame. And your reaction to people experiencing deep shame or depression is based solely on your personal values and your idea of what kind of person you should be (and, by extension, what everyone else should feel and think to be “normal”).