Understanding Emotions Chapter 3 Summary

Melissa Dong In Chapter 3 of Understanding Emotions, Keltner, Oatley, and Jenkins discuss the cultural approach to emotions. They mention the study by Kitayama and Markus in 1991, which concluded the self-construal dichotomy between cultures (Markus & Kitayama, p.226). East Asian cultures honor the interdependent self-construal where the self fills a role to be connected with others and changes to match the social context. Western culture takes pride in the independent self-construal, where the self makes itself a distinct individual and stays unique no matter the context. KO&J delineate the concept of the cultural self-construal as though a person can only be one or the other. I propose that it is not so discrete, that an individual can be

Singelis comments on a study by Triandis, who proposed that each person has three aspects of the self: private, public, and collective (Singelis, p. 582), similar to the self-construal concept. He conceptualized the idea that different cultural and situational contexts promote the development of certain types of self within an individual (Singelis, p. 582). Singelis also suggests a spectrum for interdependent and independent, but this understanding can only be used for cultural groups, not individuals (Singelis, p. 588). He concludes that although cultures overall must have some preference, individuals can indeed self-identify with both self-construals, and the dominant is based on the cultural and situational

Leersnyder, Mesquita, and Kim performed a study on Korean immigrants in America measuring their level of emotional acculturation based on their emotional concordance, the similarity between an individual’s behaviors and emotions and the predominant culture of the area. They discovered that emotional concordance and the length of time immigrants have lived in a second culture correlate positively (Leersnyder et al., 454). However, this is dependent on how much they are willing to expose themselves to new experiences in the second culture (Leersnyder et al., 461). This notion shows that one individual is capable of both self-construals simultaneously, as emotional acculturation is gradual. Additionally, it is highly dependent on whether one is willing to accept the culture. Perhaps the more willing, the more likely one will relate to both self-construals. The reason KO&J presented it as though they were separate could be because humans are inclined to create the “us” versus “them” distinction, and less willing to welcome a different