Comparing Emotional Responses Between Mexican and Chinese Participants

Comparing Emotional Responses Between Mexican and Chinese Participants

The purpose of the article is to compare emotional responses between Mexican and Chinese participants. The authors sought to utilize a multimethod approach that employs facial expressions and subjective and autonomic indicators of emotions. Chinese were reported to experience less emotions than the Mexicans across all three approaches. An analysis of the article revealed that emotions play a significant role in human interactions. As evident in the article, emotions inform human behavior regardless of the ethnographic properties of individuals. Petersen et al. (2019) note that emotions tend to inform how they behave socially. This makes it a powerful tool in guiding and coordinating interpersonal relationships. Get in touch with us at eminencepapers.com. We offer assignment help with high professionalism.

Facial expressions are powerful communication tools. The universality hypothesis postulates that the basic internal human emotions of surprise, happiness, sadness, anger, and disgust are expressed universally across all global cultures. Feldman Barrett (2020) supports this argument by using artificial intelligence. An analysis of over six million YouTube videos revealed that people across the globe demonstrated similar facial expressions in similar social contexts. This supports the universality hypothesis of facial expressions.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is an important part of human physiology. It is a component of the nervous system that controls involuntary processes such as blood pressure, heart rate, and others. On the other hand, ethnography is a scientific discipline that describes the social and behavioral characteristics of humans. These include their cultures, customs, and habits. While ethnography has a predilection on behavior and human interaction, the ANS functions are consistent across individuals and are often a factor of emotions. Notably, ethnographic accounts depict Chinese as emotionally moderate individuals. These findings revealed that the Chinese tend to experience fewer emotions, both positive and negative emotions (Soto et al., 2005). The Chinese culture is thought to have a predilection for these moderations of experiences.

Somaticization refers to the process of converting mental states to physical manifestations. A classic example of somaticizing is when an emotionally stressed person develops headaches and fatigue. In this case, the mental state is stress, while headaches and fatigue are the physical manifestations of the stress.

There is a consistency in research reporting on how Mexicans express their emotions. Previous findings revealed that Mexicans, in response to their environment, tend to not only experience emotional feelings but also express and share them with others (Soto et al., 2005). In this respect and in reference to emotional openness, Mexicans have been found to have a normative pressure to behave positively towards others and share their emotions.

The participants in the referenced article were 159 Chinese and Mexican-American students, out of which 95 were Chinese-Americans. The participants were appropriate for the study. They reflected the two cultures that the study was seeking to explore. On the procedure, the participants were drawn to a 2-hour laboratory session consisting of five trials. In three of the five trials, they were subjected to an acoustic startle sufficient to elicit a defensive response in an anticipated condition, anticipated condition, and inhibited conditions. Their emotional responses were recorded.

The first hypothesis confirmed by the study was that Chinese Americans experience less emotion than Mexican Americans per the empirical ethnographic accounts of the same. The second hypothesis was that cultural differences are unlikely to infiltrate involuntary aspects of human physiology. The physiological part of the discussion is an affirmation of the second hypothesis. It postulates similarity in physiologic responses across the two cultures. The rationale is that autonomic physiology is an aspect of emotional response that has the least cultural influences.

A limitation of the study is its scope. While the indifferences between the Chinese and Mexican cultures point towards cultural influences on emotion, a complete sampling of all the cultures is necessitated to draw more solid conclusions. Nonetheless, the article gave me insight into differences in emotional responses across cultures. I learned some of the factors that interplay in human behavior, such as cultural affiliations and backgrounds.

References

Feldman Barrett, L. (2020). AI weighs in on the debate about universal facial expressions. Nature, 589(7841), 202–203. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03509-5

Petersen, E., Fiske, A. P., & Schubert, T. W. (2019). The role of social-relational emotions for human-nature connectedness. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02759

Soto, J. A., Levenson, R. W., & Ebling, R. (2005). Cultures of moderation and expression: Emotional experience, behavior, and physiology in Chinese Americans and Mexican Americans. Emotion, 5(2), 154–165. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.5.2.154

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For this assignment, read the following article:

Soto, J. A., Levenson, R. W., & Ebling, R. (2005). Cultures of moderation and expression: Emotional experience, behavior, and physiology in Chinese Americans and Mexican Americans. Emotion, 5(2), 154–165.

Then, address the following:

Summarize the purpose and the overall findings of the article. The summary should be in 50 words.
Note: The data analysis section might be difficult to follow. Just scan this section and concentrate on the discussion and conclusion.

Comparing Emotional Responses Between Mexican and Chinese Participants

What role do emotions play in human interactions?
Briefly state what previous studies have discovered about the universality of facial expressions.
Use another source to look up the purpose of the autonomic nervous system and ethnography. Write the definitions for both using 1–2 sentences for each.
What do ethnographic accounts tell us about how Chinese people view emotions?
What does somaticizing mean? Provide an example.
Are the previous findings on the emotional expression of the Mexican (Latino) culture consistent? Summarize the findings.
Look at the participants’ subsection of the Method section. Who were the participants? Do you think that the participants were appropriate for the study? Explain your answer.
Summarize the procedure used in the study in 2–3 sentences.
Read the discussion section. Which two hypotheses were supported by the results?
Review the physiological part of the discussion section. What is the rationale given for the physiological findings?
State one limitation of the study.
What was the most interesting thing you learned from the article?