Emotions are reactions or strong feelings that are usually directed towards a certain occurrence. The emotions can be expressed with facial expressions, body movements and physiological changes in the body. Early research done on emotions reveals that there are many different types of emotions (Cherry, 2020). Most of the emotions are universal, leading to the high level of uniformity in the way they are expressed across all the different cultures. However, there still exist differences across different cultures.
The researches done on emotions reveal that most emotions are universal and thus the expression of emotions was uniform whichever the culture one was from. According to Paul Elman (2014), emotions are expressed universally, thus most of the facial expressions for the different emotions like happiness, anger and surprise are identical across different communities. The way emotions are mainly expressed involuntarily, thus very few people can completely hide emotions or express them in a completely different way from the majority of the population. Through his research, Paul established that even cultures that had not been exposed to how other cultures react to different emotions still portrayed almost similar facial expressions.
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Emotional expressions to different emotions are mostly uniform across different cultures, although there are slight variations. These variations are mostly due to the difference in cultural settings or lack of words or some emotions in some cultures.
Different cultures perceive emotions in a different way across the world. The difference in the way people interpret the expressed emotions cannot be ignored since the interpretation of expressions of emotions differs from one culture to another. Cultural settings play a big role in the difference in the interpretation of facial expressions, because some cultures lack emotional reactions to particular sorts of emotions.
The studies by Paul Elman were biased since the sample cultures which were put under study were not representative of all the cultures with emotional expressions across the world. The study was mainly carried out on developed and major cultures, while ignoring the minorities
The studies into emotions should select more representative samples of cultures and involve researchers from diverse backgrounds and cultures. This will enhance their validity and help address the challenge of bias.
The importance of understanding the role of culture on emotional expressions cannot be downplayed, since most organizations are established on a multi-cultural workforce. Hence, there is need to understand each other for good working relations. Understanding each other’s cultures makes us understand one's emotional expressions, leading to better interpretations and good relations at workplaces (How Emotions Differ Across Cultures, 2013).
References
How Emotions Differ Across Cultures. (2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JChxT9Yv2iw
Elman, P. (2014). Exploring Facial Expressions with Paul Elman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lISfh-Ip-qA
Cherry, K. (2020). The 6 Types of Basic Emotions and Their Effect on Human Behavior. https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-types-of-emotions-4163976
