Culture, Display Rules, and Emotion Judgments

PDF
Published: Dec 15, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/psy_hps.23014
Keywords:
Culture display rules emotion regulation emotion judgments facial expressions
David Matsumoto
Jungwook Choi
Satoko Hirayama
Akihiro Domae
Susumu Yamaguchi
Abstract
This article describes two studies that demonstrate that cultural display rules (Study 1) and emotion regulation (ER; Study 2) are linked to judgments of emotional expressions of others. In Study 1, American and Japanese judges saw faces expressed at four levels of intensity and rated the intensity of the external display and presumed internal experience. They also completed measures of cultural display rules and psychological culture. Display rules accounted for 69% of the variance in cultural differences in ratings across the expression intensities; psychological culture accounted for an additional 14%. In Study 2 American judges saw the same faces and made the same ratings; this time, however, they completed two measures of ER. ER accounted for nearly all of the rating differences across the expression intensities. These studies report the first evidence of a link between an individual’s display rules and ER and judgments of emotion management in others.
Article Details
  • Section
  • SPECIAL SECTION
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The journal PSYCHOLOGY adopts a Platinum open-access policy. Submission, processing or publication costs are waived by the Hellenic Psychological Society. Papers published in the journal PSYCHOLOGY are licensed under a 'Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International' licence. The authors reserve the copyright of their work and grant the journal the right of its first publication. Third-party licensees are allowed to use the published paper immediately after publication as they wish, provided they retain the defined by the license copyright formalities, regarding the reference to its author(s) and its initial publication in the journal PSYCHOLOGY. Moreover, any adjusted work should be shared under the same reuse rights, so with the same CC license.

Downloads
References
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173-1882.
Biehl, M., Matsumoto, D., Ekman, P., Hearn, V., Heider, K., Kudoh, T., & Ton, V. (1997). Matsumoto and Ekman’s Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE): Reliability Data and Cross-National Differences. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 21, 3-21.
Ekman, P. (1972). Universal and cultural differences in facial expression of emotion. In J. R. Cole (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1971 (Vol. 19, pp. 207-283). Lincoln, NE: Nebraska University Press.
Ekman, P. (Ed.) (1973). Darwin and facial expression; a century of research in review. New York: Academic Press.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across culture in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17, 124-129.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1975). Unmasking the face: A guide to recognizing the emotions from facial cues. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., O’Sullivan, M., Chan, A., Diacoyanni- Tarlatzis, I., Heider, K., . . . Tzavaras, A. (1987). Universals and cultural differences in the judgments of facial expressions of emotion. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 53(4), 712-717.
Ekman, P., Sorenson, E. R., & Friesen, W. V. (1969). Pancultural elements in facial displays of emotion. Science, 164(3875), 86-88.
Elfenbein, H. A., & Ambady, N. (2002). Is there an Ingroup Advantage in Emotion Recognition? Psychological Bulletin, 128(2), 243-249.
Gnepp, J., & Hess, D. L. R. (1986). Children’s understanding of verbal and facial display rules. Developmental Psychology, 22(1), 103-108.
Gross, D., & Harris, P. L. (1988). False beliefs about emotion: Children’s understanding of misleading emotional displays. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 11(4), 475-488.
Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299.
Gross, J. J. (1999a). Emotion and Emotion Regulation. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2 ed., pp. 525-552). New York: Guilford.
Gross, J. J. (1999b). Emotion Regulation: Past, Present, Future. Cognition & Emotion, 13(5), 551-573.
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39, 281-291. Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (in press). Wise emotion regulation. In L. F. Barrett & P. Salovey (Eds.), The wisdom of feelings: Psychological processes in emotional intelligence. New York: Guilford.
Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1993). Emotional suppression: Physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(6), 970-986.
Hall, E. T. (1966). The hidden dimension. New York: Doubleday. Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond culture. New York: Anchor.
Hofstede, G. H. (1980). Culture’s consequences : International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Hofstede, G. H. (1984). Culture’s consequences : international differences in work- related values (Abridged ed.). Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Izard, C. E. (1971). The face of emotion. East Norwalk, CT: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Izard, C. E. (1992). Basic emotions, relations among emotions, and emotion-cognition relations. Psychological Review, 99(3), 561-565.
Kring, A. M., Smith, D. A., & Neale, J. M. (1994). Individual differences in dispositional expressiveness: Development and validation of the emotional expressivity scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(5), 934-949.
Lanzetta, J. T., & Kleck, R. E. (1970). Encoding and decoding of nonverbal affect in humans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 12-19.
Levy, P. K. (1964). The ability to express and perceive vocal communications of feeling. In J. R. Davitz (Ed.), The communication of emotional meaning. New York: McGraw Hill.
Matsumoto, D. (1990). Cultural similarities and differences in display rules. Motivation & Emotion, 14(3), 195-214.
Matsumoto, D. (1991). Cultural influences on facial expressions of emotion. Southern Communication Journal, 56, 128-137.
Matsumoto, D. (2002a). Methodological requirements to test a possible ingroup advantage in judging emotions across cultures: Comments on Elfenbein and Ambady and evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 128(2), 236-242.
Matsumoto, D. (2002b). The new Japan. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Matsumoto, D. (2007). Individual and cultural differences in status differentiation: The Status Differentiation Scale. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38(4), 413-431.
Matsumoto, D., Consolacion, T., Yamada, H., Suzuki, R., Franklin, B., Paul, S., . . . Uchida, H. (2002). American- Japanese cultural differences in judgments of emotional expressions of different intensities. Cognition & Emotion, 16(6), 721-747.
Matsumoto, D., & Ekman, P. (1988). Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion and Neutral Faces (JACFEE and JACNeuF). Available from http:// www.humintell.com. Retrieved from http://www. humintell.com
Matsumoto, D., & Ekman, P. (1989). American-Japanese cultural differences in intensity ratings of facial expressions of emotion. Motivation & Emotion, 13(2), 143-157.
Matsumoto, D., & Juang, L. (2013). Culture and Psychology (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage. Matsumoto, D., Kasri, F., & Kooken, K. (1999). American- Japanese cultural differences in judgments of expression intensity and subjective experience. Cognition & Emotion, 13, 201-218.
Matsumoto, D., & Kishimoto, H. (1983). Developmental characteristics in judgments of emotion from nonverbal vocal cues. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 7(4), 415-424.
Matsumoto, D., & Kudoh, T. (1993). American-Japanese cultural differences in attributions of personality based on smiles. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 17, 231-243.
Matsumoto, D., LeRoux, J. A., Wilson-Cohn, C., Raroque, J., Kooken, K., Ekman, P., . . . Goh, A. (2000). A new test to measure emotion recognition ability:
Matsumoto and Ekman’s Japanese and Caucasian Brief Affect Recognition Test (JACBART). Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 24(3), 179-209.
Matsumoto, D., Takeuchi, S., Andayani, S., Kouznetsova, N., & Krupp, D. (1998). The contribution of individualism- collectivism to cross-national differences in display rules. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 1, 147-165.
Matsumoto, D., Weissman, M., Preston, K., Brown, B., & Kupperbusch, C. (1997). Context-specific measurement of individualism-collectivism on the individual level: The IC Interpersonal Assessment Inventory (ICIAI). Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 28, 743-767.
Matsumoto, D., & Yoo, S. H. (2006). Toward a new generation of cross-cultural research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(3), 234-250.
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3-72.
Pelto, P. J. (1968). The differences between “tight” and “loose” societies. Transaction, 37-40.
Roberts, R. D., Zeidner, M., & Matthews, G. (2001). Does emotional intelligence meet traditional standards for an intelligence? Some new data and conclusions. Emotion, 1(3), 196-231.
Saarni, C. (1979). Children’s understanding of display rules for expressive behavior. Developmental Psychology, 15(4), 424-429.
Singelis, T. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5), 580-591.
Triandis, H. C. (1995). New directions in social psychology: Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Triandis, H. C., Bontempo, R., Villareal, M. J., Asai, M., & Lucca, N. (1988). Individualism and collectivism: Cross-cultural perspectives on self-ingroup relationships. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 54(2), 323-338.
Yrizarry, N., Matsumoto, D., & Wilson-Cohn, C. (1998). American-Japanese differences in multiscalar intensity ratings of universal facial expressions of emotion. Motivation & Emotion, 22(4), 315-327.
Zeman, J., & Garber, J. (1996). Display rules for anger, sadness, and pain: It depends on who is watching. Child Development, 67, 957-973.
Zuckerman, M., Hall, J. A., DeFrank, R. S., & Rosenthal, R. (1976). Encoding and decoding of spontaneous and posed facial expressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 966-977.
Zuckerman, M., Larrance, D. T., Hall, J. A., DeFrank, R. S., & Rosenthal, R. (1979). Posed and spontaneous communication of emotion via facial and vocal cues. Journal of Personality, 47, 712-733.