Emotions Across Cultures

What can evolutionary theories reveal about emotions, and how can research on emotions inform evolutionary theories? This chapter discusses links between evolutionary theories of emotion and the cross-cultural study of emotion. In particular, the authors emphasize the notion that evolved psychological mechanisms result in cultural differences instantiated as variations on common themes of human universals. They focus on two components of emotions: emotion experience and nonverbal expressions. Several case studies from emotion science are outlined to illustrate this framework empirically. In the domain of emotion experience, they highlight shame as an illustration of the idea of variations occurring across cultures around a common theme. In the domain of nonverbal expression of emotion, this idea is illustrated by the in-group advantage, that is, superior recognition of emotional expressions produced by members of one’s own group. Lastly, they review three different theoretical accounts of how to conceptualize cross-culturally shared themes underlying emotions.