This paper presents a survey of the emotions of the ancient Greeks, as defined and illustrated by Aristotle, and offers a systematic comparison with emotions as conceived today. The object is to exhibit the differences between the ancient and modern classifications, and to indicate some areas where the classical interpretation can shed light on contemporary issues in the psychology of the emotions.

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This paper uses the method of “conceptual encounter” to examine the meanings of three of the most common Japanese terms for positive emotions. It contrasts the emotional experiences suggested by these terms with the experiences that are suggested by the English terms that are used as equivalents. The method appears to be successful in revealing the similarities and differences in how some positive emotional experiences are constructed in the different cultures. The results suggest that the differences in what is felt and labeled as emotion may be understood if we regard emotions as involving personal transformations in the Western and the Japanese self.

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Negative emotions such as anger, sadness and fear are universal; however, there is cultural variability in the ways that specific emotions cluster together. This Experience Sampling Method study collected daily life emotions of distress for 44 American and 50 Japanese college students. These women reported their experiences of 37 distresses once a day for seven days. Cluster Analysis revealed that Americans had upset, depression, hostility and dependency clusters. The Japanese had depression, sad/angry, gloomy, hate and interpersonal clusters. Cultural analysis of idioms of distress and clinical implications are discussed.

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A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to students belonging to three different cultural contexts — Italy, Spain and Cuba — to determine what emotional experiences characterize their emotional life and which antecedents generate them. Overall results suggest that cultural context has no decisive influence on how the different emotions are experienced and on their principal components. On the contrary, culture influences the frequency at which the different typologies of emotions occur and are experienced. In fact, positive emotions are reported more frequently by Cuban compared to Italian and Spanish participants. Some minor differences emerged between the three countries regarding antecedents, intensity and duration of emotional experience and some emotional reactions.

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Despite the reported frequency of anger in everyday life, comparatively little is known about the psychological consequences of regulating this emotion. In the present study male and female participants were exposed to a short anger arousing film clip under one of three conditions: Expression (participants were asked to respond spontaneously to the events depicted in the film clip); suppression (participants were asked to inhibit outward expressions of emotion); and substitution (participants were asked to replace feelings of anger with a previously recalled happy memory). Analysis of participants’ emotional state following the period of emotion regulation showed that whereas suppression led to an increase in females’ self reports of anger and related affective states, substitution led to an increase in males’ ratings of anger and related affective states. Analysis of participants’ expressive behavior following the period of anger regulation also showed an increase in expressions of outrage and disgust by female suppressors. Overall, the effects of anger regulation upon expressive behavior were less marked than those for self-reports of emotion. The results are discussed in the wider context of research on gender differences in emotion, the concurrent effects of regulating emotion, and thought suppression.

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Though gender differences in the encoding and decoding of emotions have been found and replicated several times (Hall, Carter, & Horgan, 2000; Fischer & Manstead, 2000), the interaction between cultural models and gender stereotypes is not as well understood. In the present WWW-Study 42,638 participants from South America, North America, Southern Europe, and Central Europe had to recognize 28 pictures of the basic emotions. Overall, women had higher recognition accuracy than men. Nevertheless, there was a substantial interaction between the effects of culture and gender. In contrast to the assumption that gender differences should diminish in countries with less inequality with respect to gender, the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) correlated positively with gender differences.

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Previous research has documented that the major forms of emotional action readiness are likely to be universal and that the main forms of states of action readiness are exhibited in facial expressions of emotion. A comparative study between an African (Burkinabe) and an European (French) population was conducted in order to investigate how these two cultures assess facial expressions of four emotions (joy, sadness, anger and fear) in terms of action readiness modes as well as in terms of emotion labels. Results show that specific patterns of action readiness modes characterize the facial expressions. According to discriminant analyses, these patterns yield high percentages of correct classifications, comparable to those yielded with emotion labels ratings. Action readiness patterns even allow, for the African group, better classifications of the facial expressions than do the emotion labeling. Finally, an ethnic bias seems to emerge. Compared to black faces, white faces are slightly better classified by French participants whereas black faces are somewhat better classified than are white ones by Burkinabe participants, except for anger expressions which profile of result differ from the other facial expressions.

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This paper summarizes sex and cultural differences and similarities in the expression, communication, and regulation of biological emotions from the viewpoint of developmental-interactionist theory. A model of the interaction between biological emotions and appraisal processes suggests bidirectional causality, but the agenda of appraisal is often set by immediate and effortless emotional responses. It is proposed that emotional systems function as filters, determining the impact of external and internal stimuli upon higher-order appraisal and attribution processes. A new model of emotion regulation based upon emotional communication is presented, and relevant evidence summarized including sex differences in expressing specific emotions, the effects of emotional inhibition and suppression, and the effects of emotional communication upon health. Emotion communication takes emotion and its regulation outside the individual, into the social context, with social relationships functioning as bioregulators.

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