PSYC 308 Lecture 10: Lecture 10
Document Summary
Emotion complex psychological state: entails physiological arousal and responses as a result of stimuli both internally and externally. The basic emotions: happy, sad, angry, fear, disgusted, surprise. It is widely believed that certain emotions are universally recognized in facial expressions. Recent evidence indicates that western perceptions (e. g. , scowls as anger) depend on cues to u. s. emotion concepts embedded in experiments. Because such cues are standard features in methods used in cross-cultural experiments, we hypothesized that evidence of universality depends on this conceptual context. States and the himba ethnic group from the keunene region of northwestern namibia sorted images of posed facial expressions into piles by emotion type. Without cues to emotion concepts, himba participants did not show the presumed universal pattern, whereas u. s. participants produced a pattern with presumed universal features. With cues to emotion concepts, participants in both cultures produced sorts that were closer to the presumed.