In the present study, we tested the idea that emotions are afforded to the extent that they benefit central cultural concerns. We predicted that emotions that are beneficial for the Turkish concern for defending honour (both anger and shame) are afforded frequently in Turkey, whereas emotions that are beneficial for the Japanese concern for keeping face (shame but not anger) are afforded frequently in Japan. N = 563 students from Turkey and Japan indicated how frequently people in their culture experience (...) a range of interpersonal anger and shame situations, and how intense their emotions would be. As predicted, participants perceived emotional interactions to occur frequently to the extent that they elicited culturally beneficial emotions. Moreover, the affordance of culturally beneficial emotions differed in predictable ways not only between cultures but also within cultures between situations with close vs. distant others and male vs. female protagonists. (shrink)

Cultural differences in daily emotions were investigated by administering emotion questionnaires four times a day throughout a one-week period. Respondents were American students, Japanese students living in the United States, and Japanese students living in Japan. Americans rated their emotional lives as more pleasant than did the Japanese groups. The dimension of emotional pleasantness (unpleasant-pleasant) was predicted better by interdependent than independent concerns in the Japanese groups, but this was not the case in the American group where the variance predicted (...) by interdependent and independent concerns did not significantly differ. It is argued that cultural differences in the concerns most strongly associated with pleasantness are related to differences in ideals, norms, and practices of what it means to be a person. Cultural differences in the concerns are assumed to implicate differences in the nature of emotional experience. (shrink)