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Theme 3: Culture, Self and Emotion 

 
Theories of Culture and Self 
 
How might we start to understand the impact of our cultural background on ourselves as 
thinking, feeling beings? This is a very hard question to answer. It is hard from the point 
of view of  disentangling our personal selves from our cultural selves. Is there a ‘me’ 
that can be located and explored both separately from, as well as in combination with, 
life in general as it goes on in my household, workplace, social group, sports club, or 
neighbourhood? How might I cast the ‘me’  – the individual person  – known as Graham 
(or whoever you happen to be)? What words might I choose to describe all the bits that 
go to make up who I am and what I'm like? Might those words reflect the essence of the 
person who is searching for the essence of myself  – the ‘I’ as scientist, subject, and doer 
in the act of searching  – and also the one who is the focus of my analysis – the ‘me’ as 
known object of my musing? How might ‘I’ describe ‘me’ without making some 
references to other beings or objects that inhabit my world? Is it possible for the ‘I’ to 
describe ‘me’ without making reference to my social roles and relationships with 
others? One way of trying to answer these questions is to look at ways in which we 
describe ourselves. To guide you through your self-description, try the first exercise in 
your resources for Theme 3. While as conscious human beings we are able to 
contemplate such questions, we are nevertheless constrained in the ways we answer 
them by our experience of the world. Consider the analogy of a goldfish  – on which we 
will confer consciousness for the purpose of this exercise  – which lives all of its life in a 
goldfish tank. It knows only its watery world, the other goldfish with which it shares its 
tank, and what life holds for a goldfish in a goldfish tank. It can reflect on life outside of 
the tank and how it receives its daily ration, but can it ever know that other life? Even if 
it were to be relocated to a natural freshwater habitat, would it still view its existence as 
if it were in the tank? Culture constrains us as human beings in a similar fashion to the 
constraints that being a goldfish and being in a goldfish tank places on our marine 
friend. It does this in subtle ways as you might come to understand  – I myself have 
difficulty appreciating what it would be like to grow up in another culture  – when we 
analyse the differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultural orientations. 
 
When people define themselves in terms of how ‘I am, what ‘I like’, what ‘I do’, and 
when their self-description clearly delineates between themselves and others or their 
social affiliations, their view of self is described as an independent one. Such a self view 
is a typically Western self-vies: "The Western conception of the person as a bounded, 
unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic centre of 
awareness, emotion, judgment and action organised into a distinctive whole and set 
contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural 
background is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the 
world's cultures" (Geertz, 1975, p.48). It is a “peculiar” self-view, Geertz argued, 
because many other cultures do not view the self in that way.  
 
Another view of self is the interdependent view of self. What makes us "us" (not what 
"I" am) are the distinctive sets of relationships into which we are placed with other 
people. Within this interdependent construction, in order to preserve one's identity, or 
sense of self, one must preserve the harmony of one's relationships with others, by 
behaving appropriately within those relationships. Markus and Kitayama (1991) have 
used the term connectedness to describe the essential quality  of the interdependent self. 

 

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"A normative imperative of [connected] cultures is to maintain ...... interdependence 
among individuals. Experiencing interdependence entails seeing oneself as part of an 
encompassing social relationship and recognising that one's behaviour is determined, 
contingent on, and, to a larger extent, organised by what the actor perceives to be the 
thoughts, feelings, and actions of others in the relationship." (p. 225) Matsumoto (2000, 
pp.54-58) discusses the independent-interdependent distinction as it pertains to self-
description and understanding. 
 
Although Markus and Kitayama (1991) directed their analysis of self-understanding 
primarily at Asian cultures, the independent-interdependent distinction has emerged 
from research in other cultures as well. In Indigenous cultures in Australia, according to 
Davidson and Reser (1996), "Aboriginal self-construction is in many ways collective or 
interdependent ...... Who one is in an Aboriginal community is expressed as a complex 
intersection of roles, relationships, mutual obligations and expectations, and common 
connections. While country, clan membership, kinship location, and shared matrilines 
and patrilines are primary intersects, other self-reference points include shared totemic 
affiliations, ceremonies, and language. Those Aboriginal skeins of relatedness extend to 
land, the natural world, and the spirit world, contrary to the western divisions of natural 
versus man-made, myth versus reality, and past versus present and future. Self is thus 
situationally and socially defined." (p.116-117) This view of Indigenous self not only 
accounts for one’s relationships with other members of one’s community and family 
group, but also for one’s relationships with other species and natural objects and 
physical spaces. As we shall see, how the self is viewed has implications for how one 
should feel about and behave toward others. For Westerners the depth of meaning in 
those human and anthropomorphic connections is difficult to fathom.  
 
Here a scientific  analogy might aid our understanding of interdependence or 
connectivity. “We are driven to the conclusion that there are two ways of advancing 
from primitive truth. One such way was the way taken by some of the Greeks: to refine 
the idea of causation in such a way that one finished up with a mechanical explanation 
of the universe, such as Democritus did with his atoms. The other way is to systematise 
the universe of things and events into a structural pattern which conditioned all the 
mutual influences of its different parts” (Needham, 1978, p.166). Recognising that one 
should be attending to one’s relationships with others, maintaining the emotional 
valence of those relationships, and reciprocating to other’s behaviour and emotional 
responses to oneself, is  easier said than done when one’s own view of self is of the 
independent kind. A full appreciation of the interdependent self is expressed in an 
everyday sense in terms of what makes me ‘me’ and not who ‘I’ am. What makes us 
‘us’ is the distinctive sets of  relationships into which we are placed with other people, 
and in which the actual identities of those others is important. It is not our personal 
traits that make our interconnected selves distinctive, but those relationships with 
others. Therefore, to preserve one’s interdependent identity  – one’s sense of self  – one 
must preserve the harmony of one’s relationships with others who are a significant part 
of one’s life. Furthermore, one will need to behave in ways that are appropriate within 
those relationships and within the social contexts in which the relationships are found. 
So one does not behave in the same way toward everyone, but instead one behaves 
according to the obligations that are inherent in one’s established relationships with 
others. This is  a different way of thinking about one self from seeing one self as 
straightforward, or caring, or tough, etc. Connected selves are strongly influenced also 
by how others are behaving at the time. One has expectations about the situational 

 

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nature of others’ behaviour, and one seeks to normalise interactions in terms of those 
expectations. In contrast, an independent, Western view of self holds that selves are 
independent, self-contained, and autonomous. They are configured by internal attributes 
such as personality traits, attitudes and beliefs, and values. People with independent 
self-concepts tend to behave, and describe their behaviour, primarily as a function of 
those internal attributes. 
 
Inherent in this distinction between independent and interdependent views of self is the 
assumption that these views of self reflect a cultural disposition toward holding these 
self-views. Independent self-views are said, and indeed have been shown, to be the 
predominant self-view in individualistic cultures, i.e., cultures that strongly reinforce 
the value of individualism. Interdependent or connected self-views are said, and have 
been shown, to be more prevalent in collectivistic cultures, i.e., cultures that strongly 
reinforce the value of relationships between members of a community. The 
measurement of individualism and collectivism is discussed further in Matsumoto 
(2000, pp.41-47).  
 
Research into the relationship between culture and self-views has addressed questions 
about how we view and describe ourselves, how we  view and describe others and, 
interestingly but not surprisingly, how we insult others. Bond and Cheung (1983) asked 
Japanese, Hong Kong Chinese and American students a set of 20 ‘Who am I’ questions. 
American students gave more trait descriptions (friendly, happy, withdrawn) than 
Japanese students. Hong Kong students fell in between the other two groups. The 
authors explained the ordering of groups in terms of the educational and acculturation 
influences on Hong Kong students. Triandis, McCusker and Hui (1990) asked the same 
question of American, European and Chinese students, and found that Chinese students 
gave more responses than the other two groups that signalled membership of a social 
category. However, the scoring system used by Bond and Cheung did not distinguish 
between statements such as ‘I am a student’ and ‘I am a member of the HKU 
psychology class. It might be asked whether both statements are role statements or 
whether the latter statement locates the self as a member of a specific collective of 
relationships. Keeping in mind comments that I made earlier about the different facets 
of the self and locking self-description into a particular way of self-reflection, the ‘I am 
...’ question might predispose participants to adopt an independent and agency-oriented 
strategy when answering it. Cousins (1989) asked Japanese and American students a 
similar question. American respondents were more likely to offer trait labels while 
Japanese students were more likely to offer contextually qualified descriptors. Cousins 
then changed the task, so that the ‘I am ...’ question contained reference to specific 
social contexts, e.g. ‘I am ..... at home’, ‘I am ..... at work’, ‘I am ..... with my friends’, 
etc. Japanese respondents used more trait labels than they did when the context was 
unspecified. American students used fewer trait labels than they did before and started 
to qualify their trait descriptions of themselves, e.g. ‘I am  often lazy at home.’ Cousins 
suggested that even when Americans are required to act contextually they attempt to 
maintain an independent, context-free self concept. Consider the two different ways of 
responding to the ‘I am .....’ question. Ms Smith teaches English language to Japanese 
students in a Japanese school. She describes herself as female, extraverted, honest, a 
teacher, and a movie buff. Mr Kawai is one of her students who describes himself as a 
member of the Kobe judo academy, one of three children in the Kawai household, a 
pupil in the 11th grade at Motomachi Senior College, a son who respects his parents, 
and a friend of Yoshi and Kazuo. 

 

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A similar difference emerges between independent and interdependent self-views when 
respondents are made to describe emotions. Markus and Kitayama (1991) reported that 
Japanese respondents made distinctions between emotions that reflected whether they 
were ‘connected’ with the person to whom the behaviour was directed and those that 
were not about interpersonal connections. Stipek, Weiner and Li (1989) asked Chinese 
and American respondents to describe situations in which they became angry. American 
respondents were more likely to talk about events that happened to them, but Chinese 
respondents were more likely to talk about events that happened to others. 
 
A similar pattern emerges when respondents are asked to describe other people. 
Shweder and Bourne (1982) asked American and Indian students to describe their peers. 
72% of American responses were context-free trait descriptions, e.g., he is generous.  
Only 50% of Indian responses were context-free descriptions, and 50% were 
contextualised descriptions, e.g., he takes care of his elderly parents. Korten (1974) 
reported on American and Ethiopian descriptions of others. American respondents 
accentuated others’ knowledge, abilities and personal characteristics. Ethiopian 
respondents gave answers that focused on how a person interacted with, and thought 
about, others.  
 
Miller (1984) gave American and Indian respondents scenarios that required them to 
make judgements about an actor’s behaviour. For  example, a driver and passenger were 
on a motor cycle whose back tyre bursts causing an accident. The passenger fell from 
the cycle and struck his head. The driver, who was a lawyer on his way to court to 
appear on behalf of a client and was uninjured, took his passenger by taxi to a hospital 
where he left him, and continued on to the court without consulting the medical staff 
about the seriousness of his friend’s injuries. Ultimately the passenger died from an 
internal injury. Miller asked her respondents  why the driver acted as he did (ignoring 
the legality of his actions). American respondents answered in terms of the driver’s 
personality characteristics and motives, e.g., he was untrustworthy, traumatised or 
career oriented. Indian respondents answered mainly in terms of his assessment of the 
situation and his other commitments, e.g., he had a duty of care to his client, or his 
passenger did not look seriously injured. 
 
Kearins (1988) reported on her attempts to investigate the nature of intelligent 
behaviour among Indigenous Australian people living in the north of Western Australia. 
Adults described intelligent children as helpful, being responsible for their own needs, 
having good bush skills, and good sportspeople. Unintelligent children were those who 
were lazy, dependent on others’ goodwill, silly  – they tormented, bullied or destroyed  –, 
disrespectful and ill-mannered.  
 
If asked to describe myself, I would say as one thing about me that I like reading Asian 
literatures, whether they are in English or translated in English. This type of response 
typically reflects an independent self. It is interesting in Chinese literature, as a 
comparison to my way of describing myself and others, to study how Chinese writers 
describe their characters. For example,  young women who seek dalliances are not said 
to be immoral, but instead are said to bring shame on their family by continuing to meet 
with men who are not their chosen husbands.  
 

 

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So what is involved in knowing how to ‘sledge’ (to use a common Australian 
expression) or, if you like, how to insult another person? Semin and Rubin (1990) 
received the following types of responses to their inquiries about insults in individually 
oriented northern Italy: ‘stupid’, ‘cretin’, sexual profanities, and religious profanities. In 
collectivistically oriented southern Italy, insults focused on relatives, sisters, parents, 
and incest relationships. Referring again to my penchant for Chinese literature 
characters insult one another frequently by reference to sexual assault of ancestors, 
mothers, wives, and other relatives, or by emphasising likeness to certain animal 
species. In Japan, one might insult another in a more dignified fashion by using an 
overly familiar or common form of address rather than a form of address that  denotes 
respect behaviour. Bond and Cheung found that Chinese students responded more 
strongly to insults that were group directed rather than individually directed. 
 
Finally, under this section on culture and self-views we will look at how one interprets 
one’s performance outcomes. How does one view one’s success or failure on a task? 
How does one differentially weight one’s contributions to success and failure of an 
enterprise with the contributions of others to that same enterprise? Are there any 
cultural differences in the manner in which individuals attribute success and failure, and 
how might those cultural differences be explained? (See Matsumoto (2000, pp.421-431) 
for a more in-depth discussion on attribution behaviour in different cultural settings.) 
 
Two attribution biases have been the focus of cross-cultural research into how 
individuals explain their success or failure on a task. One bias, known as the self-
serving bias (Nisbett & Ross, 1980) involves individuals attributing success to their 
own  skills and abilities, but contributing failure to the actions and influences of others, 
the nature of the situation or task, or to other external factors. If I pass my assignment 
it’s because I’m clever or because I’ve put in the hard work required. If I fail my 
assignment it’s because the lecturer’s instructions to the class were unclear, the 
questions were unfair, I was having difficulty with Web access, work commitments 
prevented me from studying hard, or the marking was inaccurate. Does this sound 
familiar? I know I occasionally engage in this type of thinking when things are not 
going well for me at work. Another, though equally biased, way of judging the reasons 
behind one’s successes and failures is to attribute one’s successes to the contributions of 
others or to favourable circumstances and failures to one’s own shortcomings or lack of 
ability. This attribution bias is known as a self-effacing, or modesty, bias. If I pass my 
assignment, it is because the lecturer was very helpful, the question reflected material 
that had been covered adequately in class, or my study group worked well together. If I 
fail, it is because I am not clever enough to be at university or because I did not put in 
the work required to succeed. 
 
There has been a significant amount of research into performance attribution. It is 
generally the case with Westerners that explanations of success and failure are biased in 
a self-serving fashion. However, even Westerners differ in terms of the extent to which 
they are prepared to take responsibility for, and control over, their own actions or events 
that have occurred. Strangely, but understandably from the perspective of attribution 
theory, abrogating all responsibility for failures and negative events is often an 
unproductive way of dealing with unpleasant circumstances. It can cause us to become 
angry about what has occurred, and this in turn can activate various psychological 
distress symptoms. But does self-serving bias operate to the same extent in other 
cultures and, if not, what effect does self-blame have on individuals from those 

 

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cultures? Kashima and Triandis (1986) gave Japanese and American students a difficult 
task to do. American students were more likely to explain their success than their failure 
in terms of their own ability. Japanese students conversely were more likely to explain 
their failure rather than their success in terms of their own ability. Fry and Ghosh (1980) 
studied Caucasian and Asian Indian Canadian children’s explanations for task 
performance outcomes. The Caucasian children were more likely to attribute their 
success than their failure to their own level of ability, and failure than success to 
circumstances such as luck or poor explanations of the task. The Indian Canadian 
children conversely were more likely to contribute success rather than failure to luck, 
and failure to their own level of ability. These results and others suggest that self-
serving bias is more prevalent in individualistic cultural settings, and that self-effacing 
bias is more prevalent  in collectivistic cultural settings. Two qualifications need to be 
added to this statement of the general trend. First, attribution of ability seems to work 
somewhat differently from attribution of effort. Second, the self-effacing bias is more 
pronounced  in collectivistic cultural settings when the context of the performance is 
clearly specified in the questions that are asked of the respondents. 
 
The remainder of Theme 3 explores aspects of human emotion that may be universal  –
we have previously labelled  such aspects of behaviour  etics  – and compares and 
contrasts these components with aspects of human emotion that are culturally 
determined  – or  emics. In order to achieve that aim we will look in order at the 
following component aspects of human emotion: 
§ experiencing emotion 
§ expressing emotion 
§ perceiving others' emotional expression 
§ labelling emotions 
§ displaying emotions 
§ distinguishing between emotion and other aspects of human experience and 

behaviour 

 
There is a very basic question that requires an answer before we can proceed further to 
analyse questions about culture's effects on human emotion. The question is whether 
emotional experience is part of the human condition? Matsumoto (2000, pp.306-307) 
considers a number of theories that link emotion and physical arousal. Matsumoto 
makes specific mention of the work of Schacter and Singer’s theory. In their theory of 
emotion, the latter is reduced to a state of physiological arousal. The labelling of 
emotion is determined by the circumstances that led to the  arousal. For example, 
heightened physiological responses associated with the successful birth of a baby might 
be labelled happiness. The same physiological responses experienced at the end of a 
bungee rope might be labelled fear by some and excitement by others. What changes is 
not one’s physiological reactions but how one interprets them. Other theorists have 
placed emotional responding within the confine of cortical arousal. The step from 
cortical arousal to cognitive interpretation is not large. If these theories have substance, 
then if one were to suggest that individuals in some cultures are unemotional, i.e., 
without emotion, then one would be suggesting that those individuals are "unwired". 
Knowing what we do about physiological similarities between individuals of different 
cultural backgrounds, it is reasonable to assume that all people in all cultures experience 
emotions of one kind or another. In this respect emotional experience  – the experiencing 
of emotion – is a universal phenomenon. 
 

 

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Research into emotional expression has been concerned primarily with facial expression 
of emotion (see Matsumoto, 2000, pp. 272-282). Research by Eckman and his 
colleagues in over twelve countries whose residents differ markedly in terms of their 
ethnicity, customs  and traditions has suggested that at least 6 facial expressions of 
emotion can be expressed and reliably discriminated between. They are: happiness, 
sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear. Eckman's research showed that even when 
the person expressing  the emotion and the person observing that behaviour were very 
different in terms of their cultural background, e.g., New Guinean and Caucasian 
Australian, individuals could still reliably produce and recognise the facial expressions 
associated with those 6 emotions. Furthermore, the intensity of emotions being 
expressed facially could be identified with reasonable accuracy. Therefore, emotional 
expression, in the form of some facial expressions, also appears to be an  etic or 
universal phenomenon. 
 
Eckman’s  research findings, if taken at face value, suggest that the categories of 
emotion listed above are also universals, in the sense that they are perceived and 
labelled in the same fashion in all of the cultures in which the research was conducted. 
However, when making the judgement that emotional experience and expression are 
universals, it should be borne in mind that the research studies on which that judgement 
is based used a common procedure which required participants to view facial 
expressions and to select from a set of labels the label which best described the 
expression being viewed. That is, the task required research participants to put one label 
chosen from a set of labels to one face chosen from a set of faces. It is reasonable, and 
necessary, to  ask the following questions and to search for answers to them before 
assumptions about universality of emotional expression can be sustained. How might 
people in their own words describe the expression of emotion by others? Will 
individuals from similar cultural backgrounds use similar descriptive terms for 
emotional expressions when asked to do so? Matsumoto (2000, pp.282-290) reviews in 
some detail the evidence for and against the argument for universals in human 
emotional expression and perception. To summarise the findings, it seems that many 
more descriptions emerge when participants are required to supply their own labels to 
those facial expressions. However, some emotions like happiness and surprise are 
consistently labelled, while others like interest and shame are less consistently 
identifiable. Markus & Kitayama (1991) listed 20 different emotional terms in Japanese. 
Each word was then paired with each other word and each pair of words was rated in 
terms of whether the emotions they described were similar to or different from one 
another. Some emotions were easily distinguishable from other emotions, but others 
were not. For these Japanese participants, emotions that related to maintenance or 
severance of social relations were not easily distinguishable from one another. This 
suggests that interpretation and labelling of emotions are not as universal as Eckman’s 
original research had indicated. 
 
It is important to draw a distinction between experiencing, expressing and displaying 
emotions. One might feel a sense of elation  – happiness  – following receipt of an 
excellent test mark. One would normally smile broadly when one is feeling so happy. 
However, one may not wish to appear so happy in the presence of a classmate whose 
test grade was disappointing. So the difference between emotional expression and 
emotional display is the difference between how we show emotion and whether we 
show emotion. Much of the research knowledge that has been gathered about emotional 
display has come from the labelling studies of Markus and Kitayama (1991) and 

 

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Matsumoto (1989). Matsumoto found that happiness was more readily identifiable in 
individualistic cultures and sadness was more readily identifiable in collectivistic 
cultures. American and Japanese respondents were given the task of identifying 6 (real) 
emotions from facial expressions of males and females. American respondents were 
better able than Japanese respondents to identify anger, disgust, fear and sadness, but 
both groups were equally adept at identifying happiness and surprise. Japanese 
judgements were more accurate for male than for female models. Japanese respondents 
were less adept than the American respondents in judging emotions and situations that 
were socially unacceptable or undesirable. Scherer and other researchers (see Scherer & 
Wallbott, 1994) asked people in 37 different countries to report on naturally occurring 
emotions. Happiness and anger were consistently reported. Reports on other emotions 
suggested that there was considerable variation for the latter in terms of their frequency, 
intensity and duration. Guddykunst, Ting-Toomey and Chua (1988) argued that 
different situations trigger different emotions in different cultures, e.g., in high 
masculine/high uncertainty avoidance cultures novel situations will frequently elicit a 
fear response. Guddykunst et al. (1988) in their research also elaborated on the 
relationship between individualism-collectivism and emotional perception and display. 
 

An example of that difference can be found in the juxtaposition 
of our Ms Smith’s and Mr Kawai’s feelings and conduct after a 
classroom disagreement. During the disagreement Mr Kawai 
was very guarded in letting Ms Smith know what he was feeling. 
However, he vented some of his frustration to his friend, but was 
still careful about showing too much of his embarrassment about 
Ms Smith’s behaviour toward him. Ms Smith had raised her 
voice when they talked and her face revealed her sense of 
annoyance. When she later spoke with the school principal she 
was very critical of Mr Kawai for his failure to accept her point 
of view. Both acted as they would with other members of their 
own cultural group, and neither realised just how annoyed the 
other party was. Mr Kawai deep down was ashamed about the 
disagreement with his teacher. Ms Smith was angry about the 
intransigence of her pupil. 

(adapted from Smith & Bond, 1993, p. 63)  

 
As with understanding the importance of individualistic or collectivistic values for how 
we think about ourselves, it is difficult for us to break out of our cultural domain when 
we analyse our feelings. If our upbringing is essentially Western, in addition to our 
heightened sensitivity to positive rather than negative emotional expression and display, 
we grow up clearly distinguishing between how we act  – or should act, what we think 
and how we feel. There is pressure on us to separate out our thoughts from our feelings. 
Have you ever been confronted with the statement, ‘Let’s look at this rationally’, i.e., 
‘Let’s not let our emotions get in the way of our making a sound decision’? Or have you 
heard someone say, ‘If I’d stopped to analyse what I was feeling, I would never have 
done what I did’? The delineation between thought, emotion and action is also evident 
in general psychology. Emotion is seen and studied separately from other aspects of 
human experience such as thought, motivation, perception and action. In some other 
cultures all action, all thought, is accompanied by an emotional response. The system of 
social relationships prescribes the emotion one should display when doing a task, when 
interacting with others, etc. The relationship is as much dependent on the emotional 

 

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display as it is on the other aspects of behaviour in those situations. An example of this 
can be found in the importance that appropriate emotional conduct has for Indigenous 
Australians: 

‘Feelings come first’ in this indigenous psychology. They are 
the most meaningful touchstones with respect to ongoing 
transactions with one’s physical and social worlds, and are also 
central to communication and meaning. “Not to show proper 
feeling in one’s interactions with others is to question the 
relationship, not just to violate an expectancy, but to threaten a 
severing of connectedness, critical to a sense of self and well 
being.” 

(Davidson & Reser, 1996) 

 
Matsumoto (2000, pp.307-309) also provides some specific examples of culture-specific 
constructions of emotion. Some emotional labels specific to particular cultures not only 
divide the spectrum of human experience differently from the division that we find in 
scientific psychology, i.e., a model that clearly separates feeling from thought and 
action, but also divide the emotional spectrum differently. An understandable, but less 

appreciable, culture-specific label taken from the work of  Lutz (1980) is 

fago

, which is 

a combination of compassion, love and sadness. Some of the other examples that 
Matsumoto discusses, e.g.,  itoshii and  amae, appear to represent a complex pattern of 
feelings associated with being connected (engaged) or disconnected (disengaged) with 
other members of one’s family and community. These culture-specific concepts provide 
evidence for the existence of  emic emotional constructs, suggesting in different cultures 
that there may be unique patterns of human feeling.