Essay Example on Emotions Among the Various Cultures

Introduction

Although the expression of emotions is mostly universal, several differences exist between cultures. The first noticeable variation is classes of emotions between various cultures. People from different cultures categorize emotions differently. Some cultures have descriptions of emotions not described in other cultures. For instance, Tahitians lack a word for sadness. On the other hand, the German word schadenfreude that indicates joy derived from another person’s misfortune lacks an equivalent term in English.

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People from different cultures prioritize emotions differently. Some cultures perceive certain emotions as primary. For instance, shame is perceived as a critical emotion in most non-western cultures but is less likely to be considered a critical emotion in most Western cultures.

Varying Emotions

Notably, the same circumstances may evoke varying emotions between different cultures. For instance, serving pork for dinner is likely to evoke disgusting emotions to most Middle East residents. At the same time, the same serving is likely to evoke happiness among residents of the United States.

Nonverbal manifestations of emotions vary across cultures, partly because different cultures have varying rules for displaying emotions. The rules are the norms that signal people where, when, which, how, and whether to display emotions. For instance, in the United States, male friends do not use kisses as a form of greeting, as such approaches may make one uncomfortable and angry. However, in other European countries, male acquaintances can embrace and kiss each other’s cheeks, and circumventing such greetings may be deemed unfriendly.

Major Cultural Differences

The extent to which a person’s cultural background influences his or her cognition abilities has remained a controversial subject across different scientific fields, including psychology. Some of the most widely endorsed explanation of the cognition disparities between cultures includes perceptions and categorizations, number representations and counting, and explanatory schemes and beliefs. Delineating variations in the three domains allows for an overall conclusion on cognitive diversity between cultures.

Perception is the most fundamental way of gaining information regardless of whether the information is in visual, acoustic, sound, or olfactory form. Our sensory organs receive, preprocess, and forward information until they are given sufficient attention for further processing. An example of a non-objective nature of perception is the Muller-Lyer illusion. In the illusion, two long lines of equal length appear to bear different lengths based on the visual context. Even after instructions have been explicitly given to the experiment participants, the illusion is still robust and persistent. A study by Bender and Beller (2016) cites that US participants significantly overestimated the disparity between the two lines while the difference was nearly absent in Southern African participants who were hunters and gatherers. According to the most cited explanations, the Muller-Lyre illusion is anchored on the dominance of rectangular shapes in one’s environment, which affects the input, training, and calibration received by the perceptual system.

Attention is another cognitive occurrence closely related to perception through which awareness is channeled to some segments in the form of incoming signals. It has been established that attention may be subject to cultural variations. For instance, North Americans tend to be less attentive to information presented in a contextual manner compared to East Asians.

Cognitive Processes

An array of cognitive processes are anchored on what can be termed as numerical cognition. Cultural differences are amplified significantly when the symbolic system is considered, specifically regarding the representation and structuring of the counting sequence regardless of whether it is by numbers, words, body parts, or written notations (Bender & Beller, 2016). Each of the representations is associated with culture-specific attributes, affecting how numerical information is presented and processed cognitively. The essential criticism is that a cognitive tool impacts how it is leveraged. For instance, a regular counting system is easier to learn. On a different note, culture may impact cognition is those aspects of cognition may entail a person’s efforts to comprehend and explain attributes, associations, or events. It is from such occurrences that culturally shaped perceptions are likely to affect cognition.

According to Nalini Ambady (2011), the structure and function of a person’s brain throughout a person’s development are influenced by the environment. One of the most basic ways in which culture influences the brain is the cognitive schema and the self-construal manner that a person used to think about himself or herself as well as his or her relationship with others. Persons from independent cultures such as the United States, for instance, tend to emphasize autonomy, right to self-expression, autonomy, freedom, and uniqueness. On the other hand, persons from interdepend cultures such as Japan value adherence to societal norms, social harmony, and conformity. Culture affects what we see and how we see it, thus shaping neural activities related to our most fundamental mental tasks and processes such as solving mathematical problems, thinking about oneself and others, and perceiving different objects.

Conclusion

Cultural neuroscience is still an emerging young field striving to understand many aspects linking culture to cognition and the human brain. To meet its mandate, the field needs to apply an array of sophisticated techniques to widely investigate human behavior that is complex in nature, the brain, and highlight where such differences are present in the brain.

References

Bender, A., & Beller, S. (2016). Current perspectives on cognitive diversity. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(509), 1664-1078. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00509

Ambady, N. (2011). The Mind in the world: culture and the brain. APS Observer.
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-mind-in-the-world-culture-and-the-brain.