Dynamics of Higher Level Social Emotions: A Cross-National Comparison of America and Japan

• In Event: Feeling, Talking, and Relating: Emotion and Interpersonal Communication

Abstract

Developmental-Interactionist Theory views social emotions as based upon a confluence of biologically-based affects associated with attachment, with interpersonal contingencies involving judgments of the relative success or failure on the part of a person (P) and comparison others (Os). Pride, arrogance, pity, and scorn are associated with P’s success relative to Os; and guilt, shame, envy, and jealousy with P’s relative failure. Each social emotion is dynamically related to each of the others in specific respects: that is, each has a twin, an opposite, a reciprocal, and a converse; as well as a mirror with its own twin, opposite, reciprocal, and converse. Pride/arrogance to success on the part of P implies pity/scorn toward Os; while Os will tend to respond to their own relative failure with guilt/shame and envy/jealousy toward P. A study testing the dynamics of social emotions predicted by the model in the United States and Japan found substantial support with some complexities. In particular, pity/sympathy and scorn/contempt appeared to be alternative ways of responding to relative failure on the part of others, which may relate to liberal versus conservative political/moral orientations. The implication of this model is that social and moral emotions have universal bases as dynamic systems emergent in all communicative interpersonal relations; and that these can be discerned in all cultures and languages.

Authors

• Ross W. Buck, Univ of Connecticut, Storrs

• Makoto Nakamura, Utsunomiya University

• Edward T. Vieira, Jr., Simmons College

• Maxim Polonsky, University of Connecticut