The 1980s saw a surge in research into how people tell stories about their emotions. Social scientists wanted to understand how people react to common experiences. Participants described sticky hands on a first date, clenched jaws on a final exam, and violent behavior during traffic jams. From this collection of stories, the researchers created a kind of map in which specific situations and actions correspond to specific emotions, such as anger, joy, and sadness.
The only problem is that almost all of the students surveyed were from North America and Western Europe. What we know about the experience of emotion and how people talk about it has come from a relatively small portion of the world’s population. As a result, we have had a limited understanding of how some cultures make meaning differently than others.
As a team of researchers focused on cross-cultural emotions, we wanted to help bridge this gap. So in November 2016, we traveled to a remote area in north-central Tanzania to explore how hunter-gatherer communities told their stories. We were interested in how members of the community known as the Hadza describe their emotional experiences, and how those depictions deviate from Western norms.
In our recently published study, Psychological science perspective (Open Access), we juxtaposed these Hadza conversations with similar interviews with Americans to explore the stories people tell about their emotions. Our findings suggest that these cultural groups do not organize emotions in the same way. Moreover, the differences we observed are not adequately captured by traditional approaches to understanding emotions.
How people talk and think about their emotions can influence social interactions and relationships, the success of treatment and medical care, and the outcomes of institutional and judicial processes. Without tools that take into account the nuances and diversity in understanding emotions, you can miss what others are trying to say.
During our visit to Tanzania, we interviewed 94 Hadza adults on a team of Hadza and English-speaking researchers. Interviewees recalled a recent time when they felt happy or uncomfortable and answered questions such as “Where were you?” And what happened? ” and “What did you think about that?” We quickly learned that Hadza stories often emphasize physical experiences, such as bodily sensations and movement. For example, a middle-aged woman said of not being paid her salary for her work, citing her heart, head, and hands as examples:
“My heart is pounding until my head is pounding because while I am working so hard, I am using so much force in the hope that I will get something. But I get nothing. …When someone refuses to pay you, it’s like they refuse to pay you because even if you get another job, you’re afraid the next guy won’t pay you either. Because I’m worried.”
When we got home, we dug up 41 similar interviews previously conducted with North Carolina college students and community members. In contrast to the Hadza focus on physical sensations, these stories about emotion foreground mental experiences such as subjective feelings, reasoning, and explanations.
For example, in another story about a work-related conflict, a middle-aged American woman emphasized her anger, her feelings of “worthlessness,” and the malice of those who had disrespected her.
“I was so angry, and unfortunately, I never respected this person anyway. She abused her power, she manipulated people, and she… [thought] That every decision she made was the right one. But the influence she had on a lot of people was, well, very discouraging, and… she really liked making you feel like you were totally worthless. ”
Another thing we noticed was that Hadza’s emotional narratives focused on shared experiences: the needs and perspectives of others. After a successful hunt, the younger man reported feeling joy “because I knew.” [his] Children will also be satisfied. ”
“I waited for the impala to approach where I was hiding, ready to hunt them. I hid by a large branch of a baobab so that they could not see me. . So when they started eating, I started going down.” Slowly, and I started shooting them… I had never killed an impala before, so I laughed so hard. All my life I tried to kill the Impala. This was a very lucky day for me. …I really liked it. I thought the kids would be happy with it. ”
Compare this to what a young man in North Carolina said. The explanation for winning a different kind of big game was far more egocentric. He highlights the accolades he has received and the features he has received in local newspapers, a self-described “ego trip.”
“I was playing on a college basketball team, and we were playing against one of our big rivals, and we ended up scoring, I don’t know, 16 points in the last quarter, and basically… won the match. I got a lot of praise for it and there was a big article about me and the photo in the newspaper the next day. So… I felt complimented and it was kind of an ego trip. I felt like…I knew I was going to be admired, get a lot of recognition and have a lot of fun that night.”
I read through both sets of interviews and summarized my observations as a series of trends in the Hadza and North Carolina narratives regarding emotions. In addition to focusing on individual and shared experiences, mental and physical sensations, we also noted differences in how we talk about time, goals, and motivations behind actions.
These distinctions build on a growing body of research showing how narratives about emotions, like other narrative practices, are culturally shaped. There is no one way to talk about emotions. In fact, emotions may not play a central role in how people make meaning of their experiences. Elements such as physical sensations and impact on others can also take center stage, as was seen with Hadza.
The emotional stories told by Hadza and North Carolina community members diverged in several important ways.
Hoemann et al., 2023, Perspectives on Psychological Science.
The Hadza story forms a counterweight to much of the previous science on emotions and serves as a reminder that people in modern Western cultures may not be the norm. The implications for research are clear. If we want to capture the richness of human experience, we need to broaden our horizons.
This means sampling a wide range of contexts, both within and outside of Western culture, and paying attention to the stories people tell. For example, when we apply Western tools to the stories told by the Hadza people, their experiences appear to fall flat. It’s not because they’re dull or unemotional, it’s because our methods don’t capture their richness.
We need tools that aim to discover variations rather than confirm expectations.
It also has meanings other than research. How do therapists and counselors interact with patients who are more focused on their physical experiences than their spiritual ones? Judges and juries don’t look like we expect them to. How do we evaluate victims and defendants?
In our daily lives, we are exposed to a wider range of perspectives and backgrounds than ever before, but it is important to recognize that these experiences and perspectives can come in different packages. .
This post was originally published on Behavioral Scientist.