De emoties tussen ons

by Batja Mesquita

Emoties zijn cruciaal in ons dagelijkse leven. We zijn er voortdurend mee het is het eerste waar we naar vragen bij vrienden, familie of kennissen, we delen onze mood op sociale media, en we volgen vaak ons gevoel als we beslissingen nemen. In de Westerse cultuur richten we heel bewust de focus naar binnen om onze emoties te ontdekken en te doorgronden.



Toppsychologe Batja Mesquita daagt in De emoties tussen ons die interpretatie ze biedt inzicht in hoe emoties écht werken en hoe ze onze relaties beïnvloeden. Op briljante wijze brengt ze origineel psychologisch onderzoek en verhalen van mensen uit verschillende culturen samen. Ze laat je kennismaken met een radicaal andere manier van emoties zijn geen innerlijke, individuele gevoelens, maar spelen zich af tussen mensen, in de plooien van hun interacties.



Dit boek geeft je een totaal nieuwe blik op emoties. Pas als we erkennen hoe verschillend de emoties van mensen in verschillende culturen kunnen zijn, vinden we gemeenschappelijke grond, wat ons allemaal menselijker en nederiger maakt.



De emoties tussen ons is de vertaling van 'Between us', een Amerikaanse bestseller die ook verschijnt in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Rusland en Polen.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Sociology, Cultural, Science, Linguistics, Relationships

342 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2022

About the author

Batja Mesquita is a social psychologist, an affective scientist, and a pioneer of cultural psychology. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of Leuven. Before coming to Leuven, she was affiliated to Wake Forest University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and the University of Amsterdam. Mesquita is one of the world’s leading authorities on the psychological study of cultural differences in emotions. Her most recent research focuses on the role of emotions in multicultural societies. She studies how emotions affect the belonging of minoritized youth in middle schools, and the social and economic integration of “newcomers” (i.e. newly arrived immigrants). Mesquita has been a consultant for UNICEF and the WHO, and most recently, she was a member of the core group of scientific advisors for the Happiness and Well-being (SEH) Project, and initiative of the Vatican in partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

Reviews

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a readable book on a fascinating and important topic for cross-cultural communication and understanding—and inevitably, as these things go, it will put your own culture in perspective too! I went into this book skeptical, and I remain skeptical of the broad dichotomy the author draws between the West and everywhere else—but the actual information and studies (many of which the author was personally involved in) are fascinating and eye-opening.

Batja Mesquita is a psychologist and emotion researcher from the Netherlands, who has spent decades studying cultural differences in emotion. And she’s experienced these differences firsthand too, particularly living in the U.S.! But she’s also highly capable at writing for a general audience, and this book is just as accessible as anything you’d expect from an accomplished journalist.

The book’s primary thesis is that emotional experiences are not identical everywhere, but are profoundly shaped by culture: that different cultures conceptualize emotions in different ways, leading to different inner lives. Some examples:

- People living in cultures that value anger as a way of asserting oneself actually feel more anger! And not all cultures take anger along the same trajectory, either. In Japan, where children are raised to have empathy just as strongly as American children are raised to have self-esteem, the typical path of anger involves considering the other person’s perspective rather than expressing the angry impulse. They wind up less angry, even in comparable situations like traffic jams.

- Shame, too, differs wildly. In the U.S., shame has no healthy trajectory, making it a deeply toxic emotion. But in Taiwan, Japan, and some Middle Eastern cultures, for instance, it does have a trajectory: displaying your shame reinforces familial and community bonds rather than setting you apart. Hence, people in these cultures aren’t ashamed to feel shame, but are quite comfortable with it. Where Americans in a study most often denied having ever been in a situation where they felt shame, for Japanese participants, relating these events functioned as an icebreaker! (The icebreaker for Americans? Situations where they felt pride, of course.)

- Happiness, meanwhile, is not prized everywhere: one doesn’t have to go far back in history even in the West to reach a point where the ideal emotional state was shame and humility, acknowledging one’s worthlessness and submission to God. Not all cultures value the same type of happiness, either; for instance, East Asian cultures tend to prize a sense of calm and peace over excitement and enthusiasm.

- What about the notion that repressing your emotions is unhealthy, and that people need to share? From the research, there is some truth to this…. but only if you’re part of a culture that believes it. People in the U.S. who repress their emotions tend to report feeling less “authentic” and less connected to others, but in cultures more focused on stoicism, the connection comes instead from everyone playing their role.

- Relationships are naturally different across cultures as well. In collectivist cultures, people are less likely to actively reach out to solicit emotional support, or to report the urge to do so, as they don’t want to burden others—but they do draw comfort from thinking about their networks. In Ghana, a person with many friends is considered either foolish or up to no good, because friendship is more about patronage than companionship and backstabbing a common element of it. In China, love is viewed as a sad emotion rather than a happy one, as you know your loved one will suffer (and if it’s romantic, well, that can be destructive).

- Language matters too: many have unique words for emotions, such as the Japanese amae, referring to the dependent sort of love young children experience, though it can apply to other relationships too. (The reaction of one Japanese researcher on hearing that English doesn’t have a word for this: “What? Even puppies do it!”) Many don’t have words for emotions that exist in English. But even when there is an apparent translation, connotations may be strikingly different.

- Even among different western cultures, Mesquita makes an interesting case for different emotional profiles (which inevitably blends into different values and manners). Newly arrived from the Netherlands, she was hurt when her Midwestern colleagues came to dinner at her home and thanked her upon leaving: to the egalitarian Dutch, gratitude is a form of distancing (more encouraging would be mentioning how connected one felt and a desire to do this again). Dutch bluntness seems rude to Americans, but among Dutch people it builds connection; American praise seems fake to the Dutch, but feeds the American emphasis on pride and self-esteem.

- These different emotional profiles cause immigrants to a new culture to be somewhat out of sync emotionally, reporting different emotional responses to the same events, which can lead to unfortunate consequences. (For instance, when a child from Turkey reacts with apparent shame to being wrongly accused of stealing by a Belgian teacher. For the child this is showing respect; for the teacher it is betraying guilt.) It takes more than a generation to become emotionally indistinguishable.

At any rate, there’s a lot in here that is fascinating and worthwhile and I can’t summarize it all. However, I also am left with some doubts.

Early on, Mesquita posits a west/east distinction between emotions that are MINE (mental, inside the person, and essentialist) versus OURS (outside the person, relational, and situational). I remain unconvinced by the dichotomy. She makes a strong case that emotions in all people are shaped by culture and experience, and she does admit in passing that “even if a culture focuses entirely on OURS aspects of emotions, some feeling, some embodiment of the emotion, is surely there most of the time.” This book focuses on psychology not biology, so that’s as deep as it goes into that. But it seems obvious that all people have internal experiences, however shaped by context they may be: humans are not a hive mind no matter how collectivist our culture. And given the numerous examples here of children’s emotions being trained in the direction suitable to their culture, clearly there is a natural biological component to work with. In other words, it seems like all emotions really have elements of both OURS and MINE.

Likewise, the argument for “relational” emotions being fundamentally different from “mental” ones mostly feel like a stretch. It’s clear that many cultures are more interested in external expression than internal experience, but the book doesn’t back up the notion that the expression or the interpersonal interaction is the emotion, rather than just the component of it most important in a particular culture. (And again, the notion that any humans would be actually incapable of having an emotion without another person present to share it seems clearly absurd, nor I think is Mesquita trying to argue that.) At one point she points out that even in the west, external expressions were once more salient—citing a passage from Homer describing Penelope as “tossing and turning and unable to sleep” (rather than, say, “feeling worried”). On the one hand, it’s probably a fair point that this modern western obsession with our own and other people’s internal sensations is an anomaly. On the other hand, Homer’s word choice is still good writing advice, in the west, today: show, don’t tell!

There’s also more I wanted to know, particularly about how things go wrong. How much do we Americans pay for our focus on pride, self-esteem and happiness in depression and anxiety? In the example of a Lebanese refugee who focused her therapy sessions on shame about not being there for her mother, but didn’t want to be talked out of her shame because it was culturally meaningful… what did she want? She was bringing this up in therapy, so presumably something. EDIT: On further reflection, I think the point of that story was that her experience was analogous to that of an American seeking counseling for grief: the emotion was distressing, but still appropriate and necessary to honor the relationship. Still, I would have loved a chapter on what happens in various cultures when people don’t live up to the expected emotional experience—or is this specific to individualistic, feelings-obsessed cultures to begin with?

At any rate, I definitely recommend this book despite my skepticism about some portions. It’s a quick read, with a text barely over 200 pages, and it will challenge your own culturally-based assumptions. And perhaps confirm some suspicions, too (I have long been skeptical of novels by modern Americans with far-flung settings in which the characters’ inner lives feel modern and American, though I hadn’t put it into those words before). An excellent choice for anyone interested in psychology or hoping to improve their cultural literacy.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unconvincing.

I tend to gravitate towards a perceptual theory of emotions i.e. at a base level emotions are physiological responses that take place in the body but that our beliefs and value give those physiological responses meaning. In this sense, our culture and our context will affect the meaning we give to our physical responses. For example, fear on a rollercoaster equals thrilling and exciting. Fear in a car accident equals gut-wrenching and terrifying. Our beliefs and values change how we interpret our physiological response and sometimes, even if we have a physiological response at all. We don't recognize danger because we don't know X is dangerous, so we're not scared. However, the physiological response of fear/excitement takes place in our nervous system and it is the same for every human animal.

By not clearly defining emotions, Mesquita collapses the cognition element of emotions (which is clearly affected by culture) and the physiological element (which is biological and true to all humans) This makes her premise seem more radical and exciting than it is and so she proposes a MINE vs OURS emotion dichotomy where Western culture views emotions as inside the body and individual and that other cultures view emotions as happening being between people. Yes, there are many different ways of conceiving of emotions, of communicating emotions, of foregrounding emotions but culture doesn't create our physiological feelings. Culture tell us what meaning to give to physiological feelings, how to cope with them and how and when to express them.

And while cultural differences exist, there are more overlapping similarities than differences because we're all human beings trying to adapt to life on earth. Every culture contends with similar social and environmental problems, for example, food, shelter, social ranking and hierarchy, bonding, mating, child raising, loss, division of wealth, conflict, theft, betrayal and violence. The way these problems are framed, solved or coped with may differ by culture but the physiological responses remain the same: love and joy at connection, jealousy and fear and rage at betrayal, sadness/anger at loss, anger, shame or joy around social comparison etc.

The sloppiness around defining emotions is also what leads her frame, for example, the emotion pride as being different in different cultures. Pride involves cultural context (what your culture says you should be proud of ), behaviours (what your culture says you should do and not do when you're proud), cognitions (thoughts and beliefs) and a physiological response. I suspect the physiological response we associate with pride is probably the same as the physiological response we have when we're happy and that this response is the same across the nervous systems of all human beings. So while cultural displays and understanding of pride differ across cultures, the actual felt feeling and response in the body is the same across cultures.

Mesquita is a moral and cultural relativist. In the chapter on child raising, she says " Inducing a given emotion is never good or bad in broad terms, but good or bad in certain cultural context or community depending on the goals of child rearing. Beating, and inducing fear are not bad in general but bad in a culture that values self-confident and self-propelled children." To say it's fine for X to beat their kids cause it doesn't hurt them, but not for me to beat my kids because my kids hurt is a relativism that borders on pathological. Using this argument, we could say as long as a culture says sexual abuse is cool, it's cool. But we see across cultures, victims of child sexual abuse understandably struggling with that abuse. Just as we see across cultures, children who are beaten and made frightened, struggling with those experiences. The outcome of beatings might be the desired submissive cultural norm but it is also individual trauma.

People inside of Western culture have fought for years to propose more humane ways of child rearing, we can read the thousands of passionate arguments from the victims of our recent 'spare the rod, spoil the child' culture who clearly experienced the induced emotions of fear and shame as bad and negative. By Mesquita's argument, they should have experienced these emotions as helpful and positive because the prevailing culture of the time viewed it that way. And yet, they did not. Why? Most likely because as a human animal we experience fear and shame as undesirable emotions- hence bad. This means we change our behaviour (can be culturally helpful) but we also dislike what brings about that fear and shame. And this often means advocating for less painful ways to raise children.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great follow-up book to read after Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made.

Lisa introduced the idea that emotions are meanings we give to our physiological sensations. However, where do these meanings come from?

That's where this book comes in. You will find a ton of fascinating research showing how emotions are created by sociocultural forces.

The author explains the differences between the MINE and OURS model of emotions. The former being a contemporary western construct whereas the latter more common in the rest of the globe.

I found it very insightful to discover that emotions such as anger, shame, love or happiness do not have universal signatures. Instead, the experience, expression, associated physiological/neural response as well as the moral/social connotations differ across instances, individuals, interactions, relationships and cultures.

90 percent of psychological studies ignore 85 percent of the world's population because the subjects studied are all WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic). That is why I appreciate books like this which bring a more nuanced view of human nature taking into account research from non-WEIRD participants.

The final part of the book looks at how we can learn another culture's emotions as well as communicate and find common ground. Something we need now more than ever!

[Mehtap exotiquetv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Können Kulturen Emotionen und wie wir sie empfinden verändern? Ist Freude, Liebe, Ärger in allen Kulturkreisen gleich? Die simple Antwort lautet: nein.
Emotionen haben keine universelle Sprache und welche Emotion gelebt wird, ist stark abhängig davon, wie man aufgewachsen ist.
So sind in asiatischen Kulturen wie China, Japan „Scham“ ein viel wichtigere Emotion als in Europa.

[Alyssa McKendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read! There are quite a few studies that were conducted and talked about in this book which yielded very interesting results that I believe are important to think about in the modern world. Delving deeper and understanding people’s emotions from other cultures is apparently a lot harder than it might seem to be on the surface; not every emotion is defined in the same way or even felt the same way culture to culture so it’s important to peel back the layers and find out what a certain emotion might truly stand for in a culture that differs from our own. For example, we learn that the Westernized version of what constitutes the emotion for “happiness” is not the same for all cultures. Some cultures even feel that “happiness” in the way we perceive it and present it is “wrong” or “unnatural”. In addition, some cultures believe that showing any kind of “anger”, regardless of the situation, is immature and completely unwarranted. Pretty interesting stuff!

My only, very small issue with the book is that I felt like it was repetitive at times; other than that Between Us is a great and informative read.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between Us is a useful overview work on the culturally and situationally contingent nature of emotions. While there was little that was brand new to me here (like the author, I’m an expat myself and had to navigate countless situations where my native way of “doing” emotions in social situations didn’t yield the expected result), but I appreciate how Mesquita formalizes an area of my experience I had previously merely intuited.

I’m only giving the book three stars because, in my opinion, Mesquita’s analysis isn’t quite fine-grained enough. Perhaps it’s because, apart from anthropology, she has almost no background in cultural studies or philosophy, but a lot of her findings can be supported or clarified by affect studies and other theoretical frameworks found in the humanities. For example, Mesquita shows that emotion is primarily performative: as children, we are socialized into our cultures by being rewarded for aligning our behaviors and emotional states to our caregivers’ expectations. Over time, we will feel the “appropriate” emotion until that emotions appears basic, even essential to us. This makes it difficult later to anticipate fundamental differences in how other cultures “do” emotions. In philosophy, these insights have been around since the linguistic turn in the late 60s, so it was strange to see that Mesquita described recent psychological studies in this direction as path-breaking.

Moreover, for most of the book, white middle-class American college students serve as the emotional baseline for Anglophone people’s emotional worlds. While Mesquita begins her book with the insight that WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) populations are definitely not the global standard, her evidentiary base does little to knock that baseline off its pedestal. Again and again, WEIRD responses are contrasted with those from Japan, Korea, Albania, Uganda, or other regions. I wish there had been much greater granularity in the scenarios described: race, class, gender, age, religion, location, and sexual orientation inflect everyone’s emotional arsenal, and I feel that the book, by not rigorously zooming in on the various sub-complexities that give cultures their deep textures, merely scratches the surface. Too often, cultures appear like unchanging monoliths with too little space given to how global circulations of cultural products inflect and alter especially young people’s emotional landscapes and how there is constant generational turnover.

Finally, there is nothing in the book on the physiology of emotion. Do panic, erotic arousal, or empathy have similar physical signs—be it dopamine released in the brain or changes in skin conductivity—across cultures? I think many readers come to the book with the question of whether other cultures have similarly embodied responses to social situations, and, unfortunately, Mesquita doesn’t raise this question at all. To her, fascinatingly, emotion remains mostly discursive. Given that there’s a huge corpus studying affective discursive formations, the absence of references to philosophical writings was surprising.

[Miranda W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE IT! I'd give 10 stars if I could. This is the best pop science book to date (in fact, it may be the only one?) exploring how our emotions are shaped by our socio-cultural contexts rather than being innate, universal constants (as the field of psychology would have us believe). I love that Mesquita discusses the concept of cultural fit and how particular cocktails of emotion can be optimal in one context but detrimental in another - I personally find this to be one of the most fascinating and difficult aspects of the human experience. Though research-based, this book verges on self-help for me and puts so much of my emotional life in perspective. I am so glad it exists!

Mesquita writes for a fairly general audience and simplifies some of these topics a bit, but she still manages to include quite a bit of nuance in a digestible format. She stays true to the body of research in this field and references it frequently (rather than offering her personal opinion as theory without reference, as many pop science writers do). I'd recommend this to basically all humans, and particularly humans that work with others' emotions (like therapists, social workers, and other caring professions).

For anyone interested in other quintessential popular reading for the topic of "psychological anthropology," I also recommend:

Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Mind by Ethan Watters
Do Parents Matter?: Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax by Robert and Sarah LeVine

Lastly, I read this on audiobook and the narration was very good. I often find non-fiction narrators to be too stiff, and while this was on the dryer side of things, I thought Mikhaila Aaseng struck a nice balance.

[Minervas Owl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Batja Mesquita introduces a counter-intuitive theory regarding emotions. According to Mesquita, many cultures perceive emotions not as internal, private experiences but as external, public behaviors exhibited in social interactions. She labels this perspective the "OURS" model, contrasting it with the "MINE" model prevalent in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) cultures. In the OURS model, emotions are cultivated primarily to meet environmental needs, including maintaining relationships with others. As a result, emotions are first performed (such as crying at a funeral) and then felt—they are "outside-in" rather than "inside-out." In some examples, people may even use emotion words without necessarily feeling the emotion. In Mesquita's view, this use of emotion words is not inauthentic: "If the most important part of emotion is what happens between people, then inner feelings become irrelevant—implied, but not necessary."

Mesquita presents a series of evidence to support her theory. For instance, when asked by researchers to list as many emotions as possible in fifteen minutes, individuals from non-WEIRD cultures, such as Surinamese Dutch and Turkish, often mentioned behaviors like "laughing" and "crying" rather than abstract feelings like "happiness" or "sadness." Additionally, in some languages, emotions are grouped with sensations like fatigue or pain, while in others, they are classified with behaviors. To demonstrate that OURS emotions are embedded in social interactions, she notes that Japanese individuals are more likely to discuss emotions within the context of relationships than in isolation.

Although Mesquita introduces numerous studies that I cannot exhaustively list, I find them scattered and unconvincing in supporting her main thesis. I am left wondering if the difference between the OURS and MINE models is merely in how people talk about emotions. Additionally, could the differences in emotions stem not from how people perceive emotions, but from the intensity of emotional regulation, both external and internal? Mesquita rejects both possibilities, but I remain unconvinced. Perhaps the OURS model is simply too counter-intuitive for me to accept.

Nevertheless, I agree with Mesquita that people in WEIRD cultures can benefit from learning about the OURS model of emotions. This perspective helps them recognize that their own emotions are also shaped by social and cultural factors, even though these influences are often downplayed and under-recognized. What WEIRD cultures perceive as "authentic" emotions are still influenced by parenting and societal norms, albeit to a lesser degree than in non-WEIRD cultures.

I also learned a lot about specific cultures and emotions from this book. For example, the author introduces studies that highlight the following emotional characteristics of East Asians:
• Compared to American, they are more likely to prefer activities that prepare them to be calm and worry-free over those that provide immediate pleasure.
• They believe flourishing may be better served by self-improvement than by the pursuit of happiness.
• They habitually see themselves as incomplete and are encouraged to be self-critical, working hard to make up for inevitable deficits.
• "Many of the emails I receive from my Japanese friends and colleagues start with, ‘I am sorry to trouble you.’ Apologizing is central to their shame practices: it acknowledges the burden placed on others and expresses a wish that it could have been prevented."

Additionally, the book provided insights into specific emotions such as anger, shame, and happiness. I particularly appreciated the author's commentary on love. She notes that love is seen as “right” in WEIRD cultures because it individuates and elevates the loved one. This is especially true for romantic love but also applies to maternal love. Moreover, "Tenderness, empathy, and intimacy have always existed. But love as a private feeling for a unique person, love as a choice to be together, love as a source of self-esteem—that type of love may be a modern and Western invention." In contrast, love is less necessary in societies where relationship networks are unquestioned and permanent. In such societies, relationships are organized not around admiration or attraction but around the needs of others.

This book provides valuable context for the author's academic work in the field of emotion research, though it can be meandering and verbose at times. It is not always clear whether its claims are supported by empirical evidence. Nevertheless, I appreciated reading it because it is richly informative. Despite some confusion, I learned a great deal from it.

Side notes:
• Even in English, the word "emotion" has only appeared since the 19th century.
• Anger can be a power move, but it is based on entitlement; if others deny you that entitlement, it may turn against you. This may explain why the misogynistic public criticized Hillary Clinton when she showed anger.
• "the best predictor of adherence to physician’s recommendations was whether the size of a doctor’s smile and activation of voice matched the activation the participant wanted to feel that day. Daily preferences fluctuated, even within the same person. Yet, on average, cultural groups differed with respect to the activation of positive affect they considered “right.” Treatment adherence was higher in patients who found the doctor’s affective behavior to be “right.”

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Interesting stuff here about emotions.

However, I think my biggest gripe is how Mesquita went about explaining how our emotions materialize. It felt like Mesquita was trying to imply a radical concept besides a simple: culture affects our emotions. And, I agree, that based on the culture you grew up in, your reactions and responses to different scenarios are varied. An example Mesquita talked about was “shame” in different cultures, and how in one particular culture shame is seen as more self-defining over another emotion like happiness.

It almost felt as if Mesquita insinuated that the culture you grow up in precedes your emotions. Yes, I’m a heathen and follow nihilistic thinking—which has me believe that emotions are a reaction to the world around us and the culture we’re in gives meaning/value to those emotions.

Definitely some interesting concepts and overall well-researched. Mesquita made it a focus towards the end to remind readers of emotional diversity, and how different we really are from each other.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF

That people in some cultures depend their emotions on the successes and failures of others does not prove that their /feelings/ per se exist outside of them. (It just proves that the cause of their emotions is external ; and this is noteworthy too but it’s basically the concept of collectivism vs individualism.)

And if the author has listed one actual emotion which exists only in some cultures and not others, I have missed it.

But! I like this sharp reminder to not take other people’s interpretations and emotions for granted. To never assume that others see things the way I see them. To be curious about how others understand and feel.

[Kristen A. Lindquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this timely book, Mesquita combines 30+ years of her psychological research on cross-cultural differences in emotions with fascinating anecdotes from her own experience as an immigrant, anthropological studies, and current events to argue that empathy is not sufficient for understanding what someone else feels. She argues that culture creates and constrains the emotions that a person feels, and that even when an emotion word such as "anger" or "shame" is translatable across languages, one cannot impose their culture's understanding of the emotion without living that emotion in that culture. Understanding another culture's emotion concepts requires unpacking the emotional episodes that accompany that concept to understand how or why what happened matters, what goals, values, or expectations are at stake in that situation, and how others from that culture will respond. She points out that emotions are "situated within relationships between people, who themselves are confined by the bodies that make them up. Human relationships and bodies have a lot in common across cultures, but they also allow for much variation." The focus of her book is on that variation and why it matters. In doing so, she focuses on situations from the seemingly mundane (daily life raising one's children) to the globally consequential (how emotional understanding matters in a rapidly globalizing world). This book should be required reading for anyone who seeks to understand their own or others' emotions--whether as a teacher, business person, parent, politician, or traveler. If you read one book on emotions this year, this should be the one.

[Selen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really important read, offers a perspective on how subtle differences in the way different cultures express their emotions can be such a defining part of the experience of first, second and even third generation immigrants, international students etc. We don't really notice the way our perception of emotions and thus of the world often revolve so much around a language - the book talks about the experiences of many people including Dutch, Turkish, American, Japanese, Surinamese, Korean and more. Especially crucial for teachers to read imo because so much of integrating a person into a culture seamlessly/in a way that's not emotionally distressing occurs during childhood and teachers play a huge role in this (the author has a chapter dedicated towards it)!

[Gordon Eldridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating book. I must admit I was skeptical in the early chapters about the author's thesis, but as the book progressed I became more and more convinced. The writing is fluid. The author systematically takes you on a tour of how emotions are created and enacted in social and cultural contexts with a huge variety of concrete, relevant examples. The book also ends with a some very positive advice on how to ' unpack emotional episodes' and through doing this build better relationships and hopefully a more tolerant, multicultural world!

[Zino Brystowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice to read and inspiring! As an international student, very relatable were the passages on how we too easily project our understanding of emotions to others while missing to capture how they may in fact perceive and feel a situation very differently. The core messages were well-delivered, and many of the examples and studies cited were thought-provoking and inspiring. I left a lot of text highlighted. Thank you for making this book!

[Marios Alexandrou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emotional Diversity and it’s study among various cultures seems like a step towards understanding each other and achieving an authentically open society with communication that goes beyond stating our needs but also humanising our emotions.
Loved it!

Especially the last chapters where the author applies the learnings of the book and how utilising them in education.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very thought provoking, especially in our very culturally diverse world. It was, however, too academic for my tastes. My brain would start spinning as I tried to follow the study results, etc. After a few headaches, I started skimming until I reached the conclusion or anecdotal story.
I encourage people to read this, but you may want to skim.

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book offers interesting discussion on the nature of emotions and how they are shaped in different cultural contexts; I wouldn't take all the conclusions here at face value, as it often felt like the author was cherry-picking examples and generalizing groups of people to support her claims, but this book is a strong starting point for discussion and adds insightful dialogue that calls into question Western ideas of emotions and their common functionality amongst all groups of people

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing and conceptually hollow. Between Us mistakes social codes for emotions, etiquette for affect. What should have been a dialogue between body and culture becomes a manual of emotional manners. Once feeling is reduced to performance, the body disappears, and with it, the very substance of emotion.

I wrote about this in more depth here: https://medium.com/@nzagalo/why-i-cou...

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting and insightful - definitely a worthwhile read for intercultural communicators (everyone) everywhere

[Blythe Waldbillig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, compelling, and an invitation to humility. Would recommend as a means to broaden our definition of what emotions are and what it means to experience them.

[Samantha Gutheil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I read this book years ago! It is hugely insightful and I would recommend it to anyone who regularly interacts with people of diverse cultural backgrounds.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and meaningful - thinking about emotions interpersonally rather than only as it relates to ourselves. A strong recommend to anyone seeking to understand the various cultures around them.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having previously done only a little reading on emotion, mainly incidental to other topics in brain science, my conception until recently was that emotions were basically physiological modes to prime us for certain courses of action and included a conspicuous signaling component (for cooperation, cohesion, antagonism, etc. as the case may be). With the onset of bodily sensations associated with a given emotion, the signaling component might be said even to extend to the person experiencing the emotion.

Reading Between Us didn’t leave me thinking that these ideas were largely incorrect, but they do now seem largely incomplete—in a way that was frequently revelatory and sometimes disorienting.

Mesquita lays out two frameworks for experiencing emotions. MINE are “Mental, INside the person, and Essentialist (the latter meaning that they always have the same properties)”. And then there’s the OURS framework, “OUtside the person, Relational, and Situated (the latter meaning that emotions take different shapes depending on the situation in which they take place)”.

When your culture’s model of emotions is MINE, this means that what counts as an emotion, what is important about the emotion, what will be noticed or remembered, and what is acted upon are internal feelings and bodily sensations. But when your culture’s model of emotions is OURS, then relational acts and situational norms and requirements may count as emotions, they are noticed, remembered, and acted upon. A MINE cultural model translates into a very different way of doing emotions than an OURS cultural model.

MINE predominates in individualist cultures while OURS is the norm in more collectivist cultures—the norm for the majority of the world, according to Mesquita, despite the centrality of the MINE model to the Western world.

I had trouble at first conceptualizing how the OURS model even makes sense as a proposal—if emotion is at root physiological how do some cultures experience it as primarily interpersonal? But as Mesquita progressively elaborated it, at a certain point it almost seemed to me the more natural way to think about emotion. As she has it, emotion is about staking or negotiating social roles and hierarchies. And in this respect emotions are not at all universal. A given emotion will be “right” in some cultures and “wrong” in others:

Emotions like anger and shame do something in the relationship with others. Anger is a claim for dominance, which is “right” in cultures that emphasize entitlement and individual autonomy, right in cultures where people compete for the scarce good of honor, but “wrong” in cultures that emphasize kindness for all living creatures or harmonious relationships. Shame is a bid for inclusion, typically (though not always) by submission. This is right in cultures valuing the interdependence of people, but wrong in cultures that value independence and assertion. Right shame can take the form of propriety or it can come with assertive claims for respect and precedence; wrong shame can be marked by hiding from sight and hoping others won’t notice you too much. Emotions are prevalent when they are right and rare when they are wrong.

Emotion as it is shaped through rearing is a big part of the book. The Taiwanese child, for example, is raised and encouraged to be calm, the idea being that in a more communal society you’ll much more often be entrusting your child’s care to others, and a calm baby is easier to watch.

This carries into adulthood and translates into conceptions of happiness (or contentedness or feeling good, as happiness isn’t the most prized emotion in all cultures and varies in how it manifests). The calm child turns into a calm adult who is able to work well with others and avoid conflict that would disrupt group cohesion. Happiness in such a society takes the form of a calming activity such as taking a bath. Referencing a study titled “Feeling Excited or Taking a Bath”, Mesquita contrasts this type of happiness with that more familiar to the West:

Psychologists and health researchers now find health and well-being associated with culturally valued feelings. …Calm activities are healthy in Japan; energetic happiness is not only less desired, but also considered not particularly healthy in Japan. Conversely, depression among Hong Kong Chinese meant not being calm enough, whereas among white Americans it meant a lack of excitement. Ill-being was related to lacking the happiness that is culturally valued.

We’re accustomed on Goodreads to seeing discussion of good and bad translations. And translation is a real skill; it��s much more than knowing two languages really well and having the access to the right set of language-language dictionaries. I think most people get that there’s no perfect translation and what is often meant by a “good” translation and what is debated about in various schools of translation is a translation that’s faithful. Despite this understanding that translation is more art than science, unless you’re really steeped in those debates, it still comes across as sort of a practical and mechanical problem.

And again, when one enters another culture, there’s the idea that you’ll have to learn a new language and that the customs will be different, that you’ll maybe never get them quite right and that they’ll never be as resonant to you as for someone to whom they’re native. But at least earnestness and clearly good faith effort will be recognized and bridge the cultural gaps created by insufficiently granular languages and unfamiliar customs.

But this at least is predicated on the idea that when words fail and custom seems hopelessly foreign, that the animating force behind words and deeds are emotions, and that translational mishaps can always find their way back to a universal emotional substrate. But Mesquita’s work shows that this isn’t the bedrock we’d hope.

Take the pathetic example of a young Turkish immigrant living in Holland who is mistakenly blamed for some mishap at school. The student displayed shame which within the Turkish framework should have had the effect of ingratiating himself and showing respect to his teacher. The Dutch teacher, though, registers shame as confirmation of his guilt.

If you flub every other attempt at cross-cultural communication, you can always fall back on a smile, right? Nothing (to my mind, at least) is as universally disarming. But Mesquita details a number of studies that call doubt even here—at least so far as the precise execution is concerned. In one experiment where you would pay money to a digital avatar that was apparently your partner in the game, Korean students paid more to avatars with a calm smile while American students paid more to avatars with an excited smile. A survey of headshots of politicians and business leaders found that the subject displayed an excited smile or a calm smile depending on the type of culture they came from.

The book often reminded me of the disorientation I’d felt years ago when first encountering conceptual metaphor, with metaphor being not simply a stylistic flourish but, rooted in our physical embodiment, fundamental to how we perceive the world and impute meaning onto it. But with the case of conceptual metaphor, all humans are embodied in a world of affordances based on roughly the same morphology and the same laws of physics; any alternative to the default (with a few exceptions from what I remember) is purely theoretical. It’s nurture so rooted that it’s nature. Within our individual cultural homes emotion feels like nature, but in Mesquita’s framework the nurture aspect must be reckoned with every time we attempt to communicate outside our native culture.

And the variation between cultures (a different kind of “between us”) is such that there are emotions that don’t have direct equivalent outside one specific culture. The examples taken one-by-one are incredibly intriguing from an anthropological perspective, but as they accumulate the melancholic gap between cultures, and the prospects for bridging it, grows in step. Traveling to another culture and having to adapt to a new local etiquette might be a fun little adventure, but having no idea how to apologize (or whether you should) when innocently breaching foreign norms seems less so.

On the other hand, I know well from experience that cross-cultural connection does in fact happen and is even common. But most of my experience in these regards comes from immigrants conforming to my home turf standards which makes the complexity hard to judge. The picture Mesquita paints of the possibility of communicating from one emotional culture into another seems to map very well onto the plasticity of youth and the rigidity of age. There’s also an aspect of necessity. Immigrants with tight-knit communities can exist in their own closed off enclaves in a foreign land without much adaptation pressure, while those facing stronger integration pressures can and do adapt (better though, again, while they’re younger).

Mesquita’s guidance for communicating across cultures (although boiling down to the sound and broadly applicable advice of approaching with humility) is framed towards researchers and “transcultural psychologists” and maybe less applicable to the everyday communicator. It’s a formal process going under the misleadingly casual name “unpacking”. “Unpacking emotional episodes means to humanize the people who live through them.” And “it is possible to relate to other people’s emotions once you meet them on their terms, once you humanize them.” “Humanizing” the other person may be a fine strategy for emotion researchers, but otherwise, that the other person is a human is the communication default (at least in the publication year 2022). To emphasize that it’s best to turn the object of study into a human before studying them only emphasizes that they’re the object of study, and so it ultimately doesn’t escape otherizing. The doubts that Mesquita herself spawned in me over the prospect of communication across cultures was not assuaged by any of this advice, not for scenarios where communication is two-way.

I never did fully integrate the OURS and MINE models into an overarching framework of emotion. They both seem to fit into the idea of emotion as signaling mechanism to negotiate social positioning and facilitate group dynamics. OURS’s point of focus is clearly the group, and while MINE encourages the individual to focus inward and monitor bodily sensations, it too is ultimately about the group. But are MINE emotions experienced as internal feelings simply because individuals growing up in these cultures are taught to monitor internal physiological states and append the appropriate emotional concept to them? Or maybe the focus inwards even cultivates and amplifies these states. It seems to be something in this direction. And then with OURs there can be an almost Baudrillardian extreme:

In cultures with OURS emotions, there are many examples of people using emotion words without necessarily feeling the emotion. Inauthentic? Not necessarily. If the most important part of emotion is what happens between people, then inner feelings become irrelevant—implied, but not necessary.

But Mesquita goes to lengths to explain that OURS experiencers of emotions aren’t simply focusing on the group dynamic at the expense of (here presumably, universal) internal sensations. The idea of emotions as internal sensations, individually experienced, can be confusing to those from such cultures.

In light of this I wish the book made an effort to explain what these internal sensations are if they’re not indeed universal. And it would probably risk escaping the bounds of what belongs comfortably within a single book, but Between Us contained effectively zero neuroscience. What to make of Mesquita’s framework in all these tales that circulate the pop-sci ecosystem where damage to this or that part of the brain affects the way we process emotion?

Overall these are small concerns given the ground covered in the book. And really, Mesquita is just the person to convey this material. Although her own emigration provided her with first-hand experience of the differences in the way emotions are expressed across cultures, she remained all the while an inhabitant of MINE cultures; and so at the start of her career it was easy to presume this more Western model that also predominated the literature. Over time, though, it didn’t bear scrutiny. Working with other researchers she developed the OURS framework. The trip from A to B makes for a fascinating read.

[Fei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haven't read non fiction books in a while so just diving back in. This one was relatively easy to understand despite the very academic framework.

[Lindsey Gray · Rating 1 out of 5]

A whole book on how emotions are drastically different in cultures using concepts related closer to social linguistics than psychology used out of context to justify the author’s view point.

With such highlights like “amae” is how Japanese people experience love, or “miedo” really means fear of loneliness in Spanish, this pseudo science was infuriating to read especially when the author clearly didn’t understand the cultures she was using as key examples.

If you’re looking to understand cultural differences there are much better books to read on the topics.

[Wing · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has lots of insights. However, I think when reading it, the reader should constantly remind themself that some cultures are better than others. Racist cultures are bad. So are classist cultures. Cultures that condone slavery or forced labour in any manner are repugnant. There are things where relativism has no place in and pluralism is a euphemism for a blind eye.
So, with this caveat in mind, I find this book rewarding as it explains why emotions are always relational, and how emotions serve to achieve societal goals defined by the community. Emotions are always instrumental. A whole host of enlightening studies and lexicographic analyses are used to illustrate this concept. Innate pro-emotions are morphed into scripted emotions and behaviours by the culture individuals immerse in. All emotions are heterogeneous and their categorisation is nothing but heuristic simplification. The author argues that emotions are “good” in so far as they are conducive to achieving cultural expectations, and vice versa. However, she has not discussed the possibility that all cultures have questionable if not objectionable characteristics. Likewise, cultural characteristics exist in continuous spectrums and not discrete categorical states. Indeed, it’s never stated clearly in the book (perhaps with the exception of the last chapter) whether intra-cultural differences are greater than inter-cultural ones or not. This needs to be borne in mind when cultures are compared. In any case, cultures are never monolithic. We can all contribute to a better world by changing the prevalent culture of our milieu - for the better. History abounds with ample inspiring examples. Admittedly, the subject matter is very challenging. A degree of solipsistic barrier persists in spite of the best effort to explain it away through a behaviourist bend. Notwithstanding these difficulties, this book is still a profitable read. In particular, the implication of emotional acculturation to immigration policy is truly worth contemplating on. “Empathy in a cross-cultural setting is unpacking another person’s emotions by tying them to their (social) realities” (p. 198). Perhaps we would all benefit from seeing humanity through the prism of an anthropologist. Or a therapist. This nicely summarises the main takeaway message of this at times repetitive book. It’s an important work but needs patience to dissect.

[Tonya Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mesquita is a psychologist who has researched the connection between emotions and cultural her entire career, and expounds on what she’s learned in this book. Turns out that there are no universal emotions, and a good amount of what we Americans usually perceive to be the internal state of our emotions actually occurs between us and those around us. Mesquita talks about how there are different “angers” and “disgusts” depending on the cultural context. She gives the example, of how Americans typically express and experience anger compared to Japanese. She talks about how we teach our children to experience emotions with most Americans focusing on helping their children identify and name what they’re feeling, and I realized that I’ve done this with my own children. It made me think about how I express my emotions, and how I’m teaching my children the “right” and “wrong” ways to express theirs as dictated by the culture that we experience every day. Pretty interesting stuff, and I recommend for those interested in psychology and popular science books.

[Sarah left GR]

Interview with the author: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/decod...

[Cody Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many of us from Western cultures and societies, I have always assumed that most emotions are universal. Joy, sadness, anger, and fear are the big four that most psychologists agree on, and researchers in the 1970s and 80s (led by American psychologist Paul Ekman) conducted global studies on whether or not different cultures recognized the same facial emotions. Did a smile and a crinkle in the corner of the eye translate as ‘joyful’ or ‘happy’ to people in America, Asia, Africa, and even remote tribes in the Amazon? The answer they found was yes, and their research included similar findings for sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise which led emotional researchers to conclude that there are ‘core’ emotions within each of us human beings regardless where we are from. They set the precedent and moved on. It is now years later, however, and this premise has been challenged. Our author’s new premise is that emotions differ from culture to culture and society to society and each must be understood in their own context. Nothing is universal, not even emotions.

Her biggest finding, one detailed throughout the pages of her book, is the difference between cultures that think of emotions from the inside-out and from the outside-in. In America (and Western Europe), for example, we think of emotions as things inside of us that we feel independently from everyone else. Alternatively, the Japanese (and other Eastern cultures), conceptualize emotions as things that occur between people first and then make their way into our behaviors and actions only after the situation has been assessed. The main supporting argument for this finding is simple: traditional Western cultures are individualistic whilst Eastern cultures are familial and collective. In the West, we think about ourselves first; in the East, they think about others first and foremost.

One of the ways Mesquita was able to research these differences in emotion was by observing mothers with young children. She encounters shame, for example, when she witnesses a Japanese mother purposely shame her child. To an American, it might have been seen as bad parenting, but for the Japanese, it is seen as helping the child understand how their actions affect the others around them. Mesquita records how “shame in WEIRD [Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic] cultures is ‘wrong’ because it marks your own failure clearly visible to others,” and “shame in honor cultures [like Japanese and Chinese] is ‘right,’ even as it is deeply disturbing.” Shame is right in honor cultures because it tracks threats to the family’s social position and shows that the individual shares the central cultural concern of honor. Nobody wants to feel shame, but when we do, it means entirely different things depending on our culture.

Anger is another emotion that is experienced differently between cultures, albeit in this example both Americans and Japanese experience it similarly. “Anger is a claim for dominance,” she writes,” which is ‘right’ in cultures that emphasize entitlement and individual autonomy, ‘right’ in cultures where people compete for the scarce good of honor, but ‘wrong’ in cultures that empathize kindness for all living creatures or harmonious relationships.” The example she gives is Buddhists, who consider anger destructive to human nature. Buddhists believe that anger not only harms others, but also harms ourselves, because it chains us to worldly attachments and delusions that cause us to suffer. Because of this cultural belief, Buddhists do not think anger is an appropriate thing to feel inside nor an appropriate reaction to a present circumstance.

It all starts with how we learn to understand our emotions: They are taught to us by our parents and teachers and are also learned via trail and error as we live our lives. Everyone’s lives and experiences are different, and with this in mind, it seems reasonable to conclude that no community or individual will have exactly the same concepts about emotions as any other. There are no blanket answers to the question: What are you feeling? “The whole idea that ikari (Japanese), anger (English), and kwaadheid (Dutch) are ‘the same emotion’ originates from a MINE model: the idea that the real emotion is a mental state behind the story of anger.” But of course, this MINE model is how we Westerners make sense of emotions, not how the rest of the world does.

Some cultures have no equivalent translation for emotion words like ‘happy’ or ‘sad.’ Some cultures experience sadness as loss, some experience it as shame. Some cultures experience emotions as actions, like laughing or crying. Some cultures don’t have a word for the word ‘emotion’ at all. Just like how different cultures have different foods, music, and holidays, they also have different emotions. These emotions have evolved over time to become what they are today and they are as disparate and complex as the different cultures of the world are from one another.

In conclusion, it seems as though emotions often involve both an internal component and an external (relational) one as well. American’s also consider their anger in social contexts and the Japanese also experience how their shame makes them feel on the inside. While the main difference may be where it starts (from the inside-out, or the outside-in), it is valuable to recognize that both the personal and the relational are important to understand. This is especially true if we are traveling to a new place or interacting with someone from a different culture. It’s not just enough to ‘put ourselves in another’s shoes’ in order to understand how they are feeling, because we are still operating from our own experience. To truly understand the emotions of others, we must first try and understand their culture.

[Preston Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful book

This book underlines some things I had always suspected: that emotion words like happiness or anger do not refer to eternal Platonic ideals, but are rooted in culture and in interpersonal situations. Even within my own Western culture, the meaning of happiness has shifted: in the 1700s, writers referred to Solomon as happy even though he saw (in Ecclesiastes) that everything was vain. At that time, if you were healthy and wealthy, you were happy, even if you were also melancholy. Happy then meant something like “fortunate” or “enviable”.

Even before I had finished this book, I knew I wanted to read it a second time.