Emotion: Encyclopedia II - Emotion - Relation to cultural and social factors

Emotion - Relation to cultural and social factors

Acceptance
Anger
Anticipation
Boredom
Disgust
Envy
Fear
Guilt
Hate
Hope
Joy
Jealousy
Love
Remorse
Sadness
Sorrow
Surprise

It is not clear whether emotion is a purely human phenomenon, since animals seem to exhibit conditions which resemble emotional responses such as anger, fear or sadness, and some animals also exhibit similar neural phenomena to humans in tandem with possible emotional response.

It has been hypothesized that emotions typical of human beings have evolved and changed in many ways since the species first emerged. Nonetheless, as noted above, it may well be the case that human and non-human animal emotional responses lie on a constant continuum, rather than being two completely distinct categories of human and animal.

Much of what is said about emotions, as well as the history of what has been said about them, is conditioned by culture and even politics. That is to say specific emotional responses, as well as a group's interpretation of their significance, may be influenced by cultural norms of propriety. For instance, certain emotions such as love, hate, and the desire for vengeance are treated very differently in differing societies. This methodological relativity is entirely different from the question of whether emotions are universal or are culturally determined. Many researchers would agree that a vast proportion of human behavior, no matter how close to the lowest biological substrates - including sexual behavior, food consumption, feelings in response to physiological changes and responses to environmental conditions - are conditioned based on social surroundings and non-human environmental factors. Thus it is not difficult to defend the position that emotion is, to a high degree, dependent on social phenomena, expectations, norms, and conditioned behavior of the group in which an individual lives. The influence of politics, religion, and socio-cultural customs can be sometimes be traced or hypothesized. Among many pertinent examples: behaviors or activities considered highly cruel in some societies may in fact provoke responses of enjoyment in others; or, sexual acts considered highly desirable in some cultures would provoke shame or disgust in others.

Contrary to this view, Paul Ekman has shown that at least some facial expressions and their corresponding emotions are universal across human cultures and are not culturally determined. These universal emotions include anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Relation to cultural and social factors", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki