Culture and Emotional Labeling

Cultures differ not only in how emotion is displayed but also in how finely they categorise and put names to it in language — this is called emotional labeling. The Tahitian language, for example, has 46 distinct words that all correspond, in different shades of meaning, to the single English word 'anger'. When North American respondents were asked to freely generate labels for particular facial expressions, they produced 40 different words for the expression of anger and as many as 81 different words for the expression of contempt. Japanese respondents, similarly, generated a rich set of labels for happiness (10 labels), anger (8 labels) and disgust (6 labels). Looking further back, ancient Chinese literature names seven basic emotions — joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, dislike and liking — while ancient Indian literature identifies eight: love, mirth, energy, wonder, anger, grief, disgust and fear. Western psychological writing, by contrast, usually treats happiness, sadness, fear, anger and disgust as basic to all humans, while treating emotions like surprise, contempt, shame and guilt as not universally 'basic' in the same sense. Taken together, these findings suggest a balanced picture: a core set of emotions is expressed and unders …