Culture, Emotions, and the Cold Shoulder

Cultural Differences in the Anger and Sadness Response to Ostracism

Bibliographic Data

ID7842834
AuthorsSasha Y Kimel (0000-0002-6476-657X, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, corresponding author), Dominik Mischkowski (0000-0002-9170-1157, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health), Shinobu Kitayama (0000-0001-9147-7936, University of Michigan), Yukiko Uchida (0000-0002-8336-2423, Kyoto University)
Year2017
Volume48
Issue9
Pages1307-1319
Publication date2017-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0221 • E-ISSN: 1552-5422
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0022022117724900
OpenAlexW2748655906
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited44

Ostracism is pervasive across a wide range of cultures. However, little is currently known about how it may be experienced emotionally across cultures. In the current work, we drew on prior cross-cultural evidence and predicted that Westerners would construe social rejection as unfair and unjustifiable (an appraisal consistent with independent self-construal and linked to the emotion of anger) while Easterners would construe the same event not only as unfair but also as situationally constrained and, thus, also “inevitable” (an appraisal consistent with interdependent self-construal and linked to sadness). As predicted, after social rejection within the Cyberball paradigm, European Americans reported experiencing more anger than sadness while East Asians/East Asian Americans (Study 1) and Japanese (Study 2) showed no difference in their levels of these two emotions. In addition, we also found that, compared with European Americans, East Asians/East Asian Americans showed similar levels of overall negative reactions to social rejection (Study 1) while Japanese had a stronger negative response (Study 2). Our findings underscore the central role of culture in shaping the experience of social rejection and suggest possible ways in which people with different cultural backgrounds may cope with it

Anger · Construal level theory · Cultural diversity · Developmental psychology · Ostracism · Sadness · Social distance · Sociology · Cultural Differences and Values · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion · Medicine · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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