Japanese and American folk vocabularies for emotions.
The authors investigated how emotions are labeled and conceptualized by individuals representing widely varying ages and educational backgrounds, who live in rural areas of Japan and the United States. The authors gathered data in 2 phases: 30 participants in each country first produced emotion terms, and another 2 groups of 28 (1 group from each country) sorted out those emotion terms by similarities. Results indicated that these laypersons' emotion vocabularies were larger than those typically studied in psychological research; both American and Japanese participants produced many terms referring to physical sensations or evaluative reactions. Also, the authors found both similarities and differences in how speakers of American English and Japanese conceptualized emotions, bringing into question the often simplistic notions of cultural differences reported in the previous literature (P. Ekman, 1994; P. Ekman & W. V. Friesen, 1971; P. Ekman et al., 1987).
Kobayashi
Futoshi
F
Department of Educational Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, USA. fkobayashi@napavalley.edu
Schallert
Diane L
DL
Ogren
Holly A
HA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000208:ethnology; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012424:Rural Population; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology