I Am How I Feel

Our previous blog recounted a study that showed educational cues incited better vaccination habits in women versus emotional consumer ads or government mandates. In this study, education served to motivate better than emotion. Does that mean we should discount the effect emotion has on our identity and thus decisions we make about our health?

It’s true. Culture has a big impact on our perception of the world. However, can feeling emotionally good or bad make you act outside your cultural norms? Scientists decided to put this theory to the test and discovered that indeed, emotion has an effect on your cultural identity.

A journal article entitled, “Who I Am Depends on How I Feel: The Role of Affect in the Expression of Culture” outlines these results in Psychological Science. Scientists recruited volunteers from opposing cultural identities: Westerners, noted to value individuality and independence and East Asians who culturally value harmony and community. Then the unconscious tinkering began. To lift their mood they played upbeat music (Mozart), had them hold pens in their teeth (it force a smile). To bring them down they played Rachmaninov and had them hold the pen in their lips (forcing a frown).

Volunteers would then take a test to check for individualistic or group values: for example, given a choice of five pens, one red, the rest blue, which one would they pick? According to their stereotypical cultural values, the Western recruits should go for the red pen and the East Asian recruits should choose from the blue.

Their results were consistent in all the tests. Feeling good results in volunteers acting more exploratory and out of character whereas feeling badly reinforced cultural stereotypes and thought patterns. East Asians acted more independently and Westerners became more communal.

The researchers suggest “these experiments demonstrate a robust moderation of the expression of culture by affective state.” While past studies have shown culture can predict responses based on affect, this study shows it also works in reverse: affect can determine one’s expression of culture.

They also suggest, “Who one is-one’s behaviors, cognitions and self-construals-at any given point in time depends on the fundamental interplay between affect and culture.

Good to know.

By Sherry Dineen