What are 'emotions'? This book offers a balanced survey of facts and theory.

We tested the hypothesis that “good feelings”—the central element of subjective well-being—are associated with interdependence and interpersonal engagement of the self in Japan, but with independence and interpersonal disengagement of the self in the United States. Japanese and American college students (total N = 913) reported how frequently they experienced various emotional states in daily life. In support of the hypothesis, the reported frequency of general positive emotions (e.g. calm, elated) was most closely associated with the reported frequency of interpersonally (...) engaged positive emotions (e.g. friendly feelings) in Japan, but with the reported frequency of interpersonally disengaged positive emotions (e.g. pride) in the United States. Further, for Americans the reported frequency of experience was considerably higher for positive emotions than for negative emotions, but for Japanese it was higher for engaged emotions than for disengaged emotions. Implications for cultural constructions of emotion in general and subjective well-being in particular are discussed. (shrink)

We investigated the cognitive structure of emotions in Indonesia and The Netherlands in a series of three studies. Sets of 120 emotion terms were selected based on local ratings of prototypicality for "emotion". With similarity sortings a three-dimensional (evaluation, arousal, dominance) and a four-cluster (positive emotion, sadness, fear, anger) structure was found in each group. Of 50 pairs of translation-equivalent terms, 42 pairs were also found to be cognitively equivalent. With these equivalent terms a good fit of a common cognitive (...) emotion structure was demonstrated in both countries. In a fourth and final study, the location of two social emotions, "shame" and "guilt", in the common structure was found to be closer to "fear" and somewhat further away from "anger" in Indonesia than in the Netherlands. (shrink)