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Emotional expression and experience are dynamic processes that vary within and between individuals of different cultural groups (Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, 2006). The present study sought to compare self-reports of processes related to emotion communication and control in India and the United States. A total of 268 participants (United States:...
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Extant literature has shown that authenticity is positively related with life satisfaction and psychological well-being. Nonetheless, most of the previous research has been conducted in Western and European individualistic countries. The association of authenticity with life satisfaction and psychological well-being in the Asian collectivist contex...
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... In a study on Indian and American students regarding expression of emotions and control, it was found that Indians' expression of emotions was modulated by others' expectations and maintaining group harmony and avoiding situations in which there is possibility of devaluation of self and family. [71] According to Indian scriptures, emotions arise out of desire; the stronger the desire, the more intense the emotion. [72] In fact, Indians have seen to have alexithymia in psychiatric as well as medical disorders. ...
Alexithymia has been described as difficulty in expressing as well as experiencing feelings. It has been studied in relation with medical as well as psychological conditions and has been seen to impact treatment outcomes. The current review focuses on the relationship of alexithymia with depression and the role of culture in this relationship. The keywords for literature included terms such as depression, alexithymia, depression and alexithymia, Toronto Alexithymia Scale, assessing alexithymia and depression, and alexithymia as a trait. The main findings of the review were that alexithymia and depression are highly correlated, and severity of depression and gender are independently associated with alexithymia and may interfere with treatment outcomes.
... Previous research supports implicit markers as an important form of communication for South Asians. For example, Crowe, Raval, Trivedi, Daga, and Raval (2012) found that college students from India, more than U.S. college students, commonly reported methods of implicit emotional expression, like subtle facial expressions or changes in tone of voice. ...
The ways in which people conceptualize and experience psychological distress and well-being are culturally grounded. This study explored conceptualizations of loss, trauma, anxiety, and well-being among international students from Asia living in the United States. Participants (N = 24) from China, India, and other South Asian countries described community members who experienced a distressing event and were now either functioning well or not well. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyze interview data, and 18 identified themes were organized in the following five domains: contextual conceptualizations of well-being and distress, value of distress, social relationships, intrapersonal factors, and other factors contributing to well or poor functioning. Findings highlighted that conceptualizations of well-being and distress not only included intrapsychic states, but were also grounded in social contexts and included the presence or absence of relational support, material resources, physical health, and academic/career achievement. Having social connections with family, friends, and community were considered vital to well-being, and disruptions in these relationships were thought to lead to distress, among other factors. Participants also reported that after experiencing a distressing event, continuing to withdraw from social relationships was an indicator of poor functioning, whereas reengaging with people and with one’s social roles was an indicator of better functioning. These findings contribute to culturally informed understanding of distress and well-being, and culturally sensitive mental health services for international students.
... Cultural affordances that make societies unique include factors such as motivations (Markus and Kitayama, 2010) and norms (Eid and Diener, 2001;Marcus and Sabuncu, 2016) that shape the elicitation (Vandello et al., 2008), communication (Crowe et al., 2012), lexica (Dzokoto and Okazaki, 2006), experience (Kitayama et al., 2006), psychological emphasis (Ryder et al., 2008), expression control (Matsumoto et al., 2008), and regulation (Ma et al., 2017) of emotion. It is therefore reasonable to assume that some of this cultural scripting of emotions will be reflected in a culture's proverbs. ...
Proverbs are widely used by the Akan of West Africa. The current study thematically analyzed an Akan proverb compendium for proverbs containing emotion references. Of the identified proverbs, a focus on negative emotions was most typical. Emotion-focused proverbs highlighted four emotion regulation strategies: change in cognition, response modulation, situation modification, and situation selection. A subset of proverbs addressed emotion display rules restricting the expression of emotions such as pride, and emotional contagion associated with emotions such as shame. Additional themes including: social context influences on the expression and experience of emotion; expectations of emotion limits; as well as the nature of emotions were present in the proverb collection. In general, Akan emotion-related proverbs stress individual-level responsibility for affect regulation in interpersonal interactions and societal contexts.
... Four hundred ninety-nine participants representing three cultural groups (Anglo-Americans, Asian Americans, and Indians) completed a cross-sectional survey via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (mTurk). Indian participants were selected as a representative of a collectivistic culture (Crowe, Raval, Trivedi, Daga, & Raval, 2012;Raval, Martini, & Raval, 2007). mTurk is a web-based marketplace which provides an opportunity for workers from all over the world to participate in tasks requiring use of human intelligence (i.e., one's computers will not be able to perform). ...
Previous research finds cultural differences in response to activities designed to increase happiness, or Positive Psychological Intervention (PPIs). The goal of the present study is to explore why different cultural groups respond differently to PPIs. Specifically, we examined responsiveness to PPIs in three cultural groups – Anglo-American, Asian-American, and Indian (living in India) – both quantitatively and qualitatively. Participants (n=469) were recruited and participated in the study via Amazon Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to a 15-minute writing task focused on gratitude, optimism, or daily activities (control). As expected, we observed a culture by condition interaction whereby Anglo-Americans experienced increases in positive emotion with both gratitude and optimism tasks, but Indian participants experienced increases in both positive emotion and negative emotion when practicing gratitude, but not optimism. Qualitative analyses revealed possible causes for variability in success of PPIs in different cultures, and suggest possible adjustments that could be made to improve their efficacy. In summary, we observed differences in response to gratitude, but not optimism, that may be fueled by an adverse affective response among non-Anglo-American participants – gratitude makes them feel good, but also sad and guilty.
... For example, the reference to others' behavior as an antecedent of emotions has been more important in the description of Spanish participants than in that of Dutch participants (Fischer, Manstead, & Rodriguez Mosquera, 1999). Furthermore, it has been shown that emotional reactions to poor achievement differ across cultures depending on how publicly the negative feedback is given (Crowe, Raval, Trivedi, Daga, & Raval, 2012). For example, participants from the United States reported higher levels of embarrassment especially caused by "having to talk to their parents about their poor grades," and lower levels of anxiety and sadness after failure than their counterparts in India reported (Crowe et al., 2012). ...
... Furthermore, it has been shown that emotional reactions to poor achievement differ across cultures depending on how publicly the negative feedback is given (Crowe, Raval, Trivedi, Daga, & Raval, 2012). For example, participants from the United States reported higher levels of embarrassment especially caused by "having to talk to their parents about their poor grades," and lower levels of anxiety and sadness after failure than their counterparts in India reported (Crowe et al., 2012). Related to this, Grossmann and Kross (2010) found differences in the appraisal of emotional events: While reflecting on a negative event in the past, students in Russia reported less blame of the other person and were less distressed and, therefore, showed less anger than students in the United States. ...
In this study, we investigate whether the cultural-educational contexts in Russia, Germany, and the United States affect university students’ emotions, failure attributions, and behavioral tendencies after receiving negative achievement feedback from a lecturer. The 383 university students from Germany, Russia, and the United States participating in the study completed an online survey in which they read text vignettes of a university lecturer giving negative feedback to a student on his performance. We used a 2 × 3 × 3 experimental design to determine whether the negative feedback situation (private vs. public), the lecturer’s display of emotion (no emotion vs. anger vs. pity), and the cultural-educational contexts (German, Russian, U.S.) affected the participants’ judgment of the student’s affective and behavioral reactions to the negative feedback. Significant main effects and significant interactions were identified, for example, participants in Germany and in the United States reported stronger emotions in response to the negative feedback than the participants in Russia indicated. Also, compared with the participants in Germany and the United States, the participants in Russia attributed the student’s failure more often to external, unstable, and controllable factors and expected the student to adopt more approach tendencies after receiving the failure feedback. Furthermore, a culturally universal effect of emotional transmission between lecturer and student was found, as participants believed the student, for example, to feel anger when his lecturer displayed anger. Overall, the interplay of cultural-educational and situational contexts can affect the way students respond to the emotions a university lecturer displays, and those emotions can shape students’ learning behavior.
... For example, Kitayama, Mesquita, and Karasawa (2006) found that Japanese college students were more likely to experience socially engaging emotions (i.e., friendliness, guilt), whereas American college students were more likely to experience disengaging emotions (i.e., pride, 3 anger). Similarly, Crowe, Raval, Trivedi, Daga, and Raval (2012) found that United States college students primarily reported more self-focused emotions (i.e., happiness) and self-and other-focused motives for expressing or controlling felt emotion in response to hypothetical vignettes. In contrast, Indian participants reported that they were more likely to have relationship-focused motives and to experience emotions based on others' well-being. ...
... For example, Wilson et al. (2012) found that Indian children were less likely to report direct verbal expression (e.g., stating that they were angry or sad) than United States children. This preference for communicating emotions in indirect ways was also found among Indian college students, who reported relying on implicit and contextual methods of emotion communication (i.e., description of the emotion-eliciting situation and changes in voice tone) more than college students in United States (Crowe et al., 2012). ...
... Highcontext communication is also consistent with preferences that have been found in native Indian populations. For example, college students in India were reported to have stronger preference for indirect communication of emotion than American students (Crowe et al., 2012). Our current research indicates that preference for a subtle, high-context strategy of communicating emotion continues to be relevant after families immigrate to the United States. ...
We explored the meta-emotion philosophies of Indian immigrant mothers living in the Midwest region of the United States to expand the scarce literature on emotion socialization in diverse families. A total of 15 mothers of teen and preteen children participated in a meta-emotion interview, in which they were asked about their own and their children’s experiences of anger, sadness, and fear. We analyzed interview responses through an open-ended phenomenological approach and found the following major themes: familial context of emotions, subtle communication of emotions, and an overarching philosophy centering on inevitability of negative emotions and the importance of moving on. Mothers differed in how well they believed that they could move on. Overall, the present findings demonstrate the role culture plays in emotional experiences of immigrant mothers and serve as a reminder that theories based on European American families might have limited applicability to other cultural and ethnic groups.
An existing body of research demonstrates the efficacy of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills in reducing a range of psychiatric symptomatology in the United States, although the relevance of DBT Skills in low- and middle-income countries in the Global South has been understudied. Focusing on India, a middle-income country, in this qualitative study, we explored the relevance of DBT Skills for emerging adults—typically individuals aged 18–29 years—using focus groups with counseling psychology graduate students. Students ( N = 22, 90% women) participated in initial focus groups where DBT Skills were outlined and were asked whether these skills would be relevant for emerging adults in India, and what adaptations may be needed. Then, students received a virtual four-week DBT Skills training program in which they learned extensively about DBT Skills and subsequently participated in focus groups to discuss the relevance of those skills for emerging adults in India. Incorporating the adaptations they recommended, students then facilitated DBT Skills groups with emerging adults in India for eight weeks and then participated in focus groups to discuss the relevance of the skills. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data from the three sets of focus groups. Twelve themes were identified and organized into three separate domains: (a) views about optimal interventions; (b) relevance of DBT Skills; and (c) sociocultural adaptations to DBT Skills. Overall, findings suggest relevance of DBT Skills for emerging adults in India with specific adaptations to emotion regulation, and more broadly to all modules by integrating collectivistic values and local cultural norms.
Socialization of children’s emotions is implicated in a variety of child outcomes including children’s social and emotional competence, peer relations, self-esteem, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Recognizing the importance of culture, an emerging body of literature has examined caregiver socialization of children’s emotions in culturally diverse groups and has shown both similarities and variation in parental emotion-related socialization behaviors. Preliminary findings also suggest that caregiver emotion socialization behaviors that are associated with adaptive child outcomes in White middle-class families (with whom a bulk of the emotion socialization research is conducted) may not be related to adaptive child functioning in other cultural groups. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework that extends Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad’s (1998) model and unpacks aspects of culture that help explain the variation in caregiver emotion socialization processes and in the relation between caregiver emotion socialization and child socio-emotional functioning across cultural groups. Within the context of this framework, we systematically review published studies of caregiver emotion related socialization behaviors in culturally diverse families for children between preschool-age to adolescence, with a focus on their implication for child well-being. Gaps in the existing literature are identified, and directions for future research are outlined.
India is a world within the world, a complex melting pot of diverse belief systems, social structures, political views, languages, cultural norms, and consumption patterns. With a population of over 1.2 billion people, second to China, this country is a critical marketplace. Indian consumers are unique, and understanding their discrete emotions and enabling emotional connects with brands can help companies garner huge payoffs. The purposes of this chapter are to (a) underscore the possibility of scientifically studying consumer emotions (specifically, discrete emotions) and understanding their role as antecedents, moderators, mediators, and consequences in the consumption process and (b) encourage academicians and practitioners worldwide to study consumer discrete emotions in significant emerging economies such as India. This chapter is organized into three sections. The first section presents the theories of emotions, highlighting the significance of cognitive theories of emotions. Appraisal theories and frameworks are also discussed to help understand the formation of specific discrete emotions. Measurement methods to capture consumer emotions are also discussed. The second section discusses two studies conducted in India. The first study contrasts two positive valence emotions: happy versus hopeful. The second study contrasts two negative valence emotions: benign envy versus malicious envy. Each study throws light on where and how the Indian sample findings add to the existing emotions literature. The last section concludes by summarizing key lessons and calling upon practitioners and academicians to invest in the study of consumers’ discrete emotions in emerging economies such as India.
