Cultural Differences in Emotional Expressivity.

When I am thinking about how express our feelings in front of different situations, It is so interesting to find similarities and differences between one culture and other. For example, one time I invited to two northamercan friends to buy some grosseries in PriceSmart market , here in Colombia. When they came in, they started jumping and laughing, seeing each other and pointing out different products. And one of them said: I want this, and you? I want this better. After, they said sorry for their behavior, but they felt so exciting to see again different products from their country. I was so happy for them, and they could buy some things.

However, when I was in USA, I found different products from my country with some american friends, and I was happy to see these products there, I did not want to scream or jump or laugh loudly like my friends. Their way to express some emotions are so different. Maybe I had jumped or scream if I found an old friend, or a family member. But not for finding food made in my country.

I was studying little more about these type of cultural differences based on how can we express different emotions even with our faces. I found one web page that explained “Culture and Emotion” between North American people and Asian people. These studies revealed both cultural similarities and differences in various aspects of emotional life: family life, jobs, states of moody etc. For example, When to different participants in the study showed them some pictures with different facial expressions, “whereas 95% of U.S. participants associated a smile with “happiness,” only 69% of Sumatran participants did. Similarly, 86% of U.S. participants associated wrinkling of the nose with “disgust,” but only 60% of Japanese did (Ekman et al., 1987. Reference Ekman, P., Friesen, W., O\’Sullivan, M., Chan, D., Diacoyanni-Tarlatzis, I., Heider, K., . . . Tzavaras, A. (1987). “

We can see many differences at time to show our feelings or emotions. Latin american people show emotions with all their body, their facial expressions etc. But if we knew some people from Asia or Indian, they are very shy than others. I think that is important to know these kind of differences with my foreign students, in language classes, when they are from different cultures, because You need to detect how they are feeling and whether they are comfortable in the class and avoid misunderstanding and generate other feelings or thoughts.