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Emotional Differences Across Cultures

Despite the common conversation over whether emotions are universal or not, research on emotional expression cross-culturally has displayed that emotions aren't expressed exactly the same across cultures. When investigating the types of emotions experienced, there are two kinds known as socially engaging emotions and socially disengaging emotions. Socially engaging emotions refer to emotions that generate closeness, relationships and connection to other people such as friendliness while socially disengaging emotions generate autonomy, independence and disconnection from others such as anger or frustration. Comparing research on Japanese culture with American culture, it was found that Japanese culture utilizes socially engaging emotions more than disengaging ones while American culture utilizes socially disengaging emotions more than engaging ones.

Differences in emotion regulation are also present . In Western cultures, it is very typical to want to maintain and exaggerate feelings of happiness and joy when they are experienced . This often stems from the idea that negative emotions must be avoided while striving for only positive feelings which is widely believed in Western cultures . This differs from Eastern cultures that tend to see the good and bad to positive emotions while not exaggerating positive emotions when experienced . In Eastern cultures, it is recognized that emotions are temporary and that feelings of good and bad can occur at the same time.