I should have read the Matsumoto reading first. I read it last and then I felt the need to revisit the other articles with his work in mind. His writing made me hyperaware of the importance of cultural contextualization in emotion research and although I’ve been vigilant to certain “American” science biases, I found that my revisits--under the scope of his perspective--cast the other research in a vitally new light. I agree with his suggestion for the revision of mainstream psychology and the need to integrate it with cross cultural studies (Matsumoto p.15). I also agree with Matsumoto that a basic emotions theory that transcends culture is a good working theory even if it’s not completely articulated (yet). There are only so many hormones, based on only so many amino acids, encoded by only so many DNA bases. Certainly, some of these chemicals play a bigger, more primary function than others in the processing and expression of emotion but by like token, they can be mixed in a diversity of chemical cocktails. If an emotion is recognized and expressed across a spectrum of radically different “sociopsychological constructs,” then the likelihood of its universality seems reliably validated (Matsumoto, p.2). The on-going question, as we have repeatedly discussed in class, is if these basic emotions exist, what are they? Matsumoto is convinced by Ekman’s super “six”—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, and adds his own “contempt.” He believes these are universal in a cross-culturally acceptable way and re-emphasizes that if we don’t accommodate for a cultural context in our search for them, we may wrongly asses their globalization.

Still, scientists do not always recognize their own bias. In the “Sex Differences…” article, Wager, et al. do not bother to contextualize the sociopsychological constructs influencing the research. Who are the subjects? What kind of culture do they live in? Are they Americans? French? Sudanese? Gay? They briefly touch on the possibility that discrepancies in their findings might suggest “regulation of expression” based on “self-presentation biases” and “beliefs about emotions, including cultural stereotypes” but they continue to generalize using the terms “men” and “women” as if all men and women are alike (and perhaps all men and all women are alike in some ways, but without context, how can we be sure the research is not universalizing the responses of particular men and particular women?) Would their findings be different if they studied men and women from a more matriarchal society or from more diverse sexual orientations? What images are they using to arouse emotion? Did they research whether or not these images were cross-culturally emotionally arousing?


The “Amae” article is far more contextualized. I really enjoyed the idea that “emotions named by a language may act as magnets for emotional experience (Niiya and Ellsworth, p. 293).” It suggests that the larger our emotional vocabulary, the more expansive our palette of “feeling.” As I read it, I was reminded of Barrett’s metaphor of the color wheel to describe basic emotions and the idea that more complex emotions are derivative of these basic tones. In the following days, I found myself referencing Amae in my own relationship anecdotes when other feelings felt less specific. It’s like learning the word for “violet” after previously trying to describe the color as either red or blue or a combination of the two. The feeling/color takes on its own significance and becomes more easily seen, utilized, communicated and in the end, felt. According to Matsumoto’s research, we can not only learn to “see” new feelings, but we can be taught not to see them, as in the case of the Asians rating facial posers as having less intense emotions than Caucasions out of “politeness or ignorance” (Matsumoto, p. 7).

I was struck but the fact that Amae was hard to categorize as an emotion because it did not have a corresponding facial expression or particular physiology (Niiya et al. p.280). Have scientists researched the physiology of Amae? And is facial expression the only behavior that can qualify an emotion? The writers also stated Amae would be “oversimplified” if deemed an emotion because it is relational and involves beliefs, etc. (Niiya et al. p. 281). I wonder what Matsumoto would think of this.

The “First Language” excerpt seems in alignment with Matsumoto’s approach. It is abundantly contextualized while aware of its cultural limitations--such as the idea that Turks might be more reactionary to violent words than Americans who are more removed from war (Harris, et al. p. 269). The use of SCR helps curb the biases of expression regulation, a problem in the research on sex differences, and the historical biases of linguistics have been re-examined and eliminated (Harris, et al. p. 273). It was interesting that childhood reprimands scored the highest on emotional reactivity supporting the theory that in childhood, we are building the emotional systems that dictate our emotional sensitivity as adults (Harris, et al. p. 262). I don’t know much about the child development side of this but perhaps someone in class can shed more light on the relationship between the emotional receptiveness of childhood and the development of adult preference and personality. Even if a second language can be more emotional given the emotional context of learning it, perhaps the wiring for emotional sensitivity, in general, takes place at a much earlier age.