Undergraduate Category: Social Sciences Degree Level: Bachelors ...
Undergraduate Category: Social Sciences Degree Level: Bachelors Degree Abstract ID# 1441 Novel Emotions are Perceived by Hunter-Gatherers: Implications for Methods for Testing Universality Maria Gendron,Katie Hoemann, Austin Fernandez, Michelle Vayngrib, Leighanne Wang, & Lisa Feldman Barrett METHOD ABSTRACT Emotions are an important aspect of the human experience, yet cultures vary remarkably in the concepts that have to describe these phenomena. We are interested in whether people can be taught about emotions that vary across various cultures. Our experiment examined whether a standard paradigm in the study of crosscultural emotion perception can actually be understood as a method that teaches emotions. We conducted a study to investigate whether individuals from one of the last hunter-gatherer cultures in Africa (the Hadza of Tanzania) can perform an emotion matching task on emotions that are entirely new to their culture (e.g., the concept of Itoshii, drawn from Japanese). We predicted that this standard paradigm would produce above chance agreement in the matching task, indicating that the prior literature on emotion perception in remote cultures likely contains false positives. Consistent with this prediction, Hadza participants were above chance to perceive a number (but not all) of the novel emotions. On the one hand, this research indicates that tasks used to test for cultural universals may inherently encourage false positives. On the other hand, these data indicate that there is fast learning of cross-cultural emotions in a minimal paradigm, suggesting that more robust paradigms aimed at explicitly teaching emotions will be successful at doing so. Future directions and implications of this work suggest it is possible to teach people to better communicate about emotions across cultures, potentially limiting the occurrence of cultural misunderstandings.
RESULTS
STIMULUS SELECTION/DEVELOPMENT Participants were tested on concepts sourced from “untranslatable” words for emotions across the globe.
HYPOTHESIS
Camp 2
Camp 1
Camp 3
• Participants were 55 individuals (22 women; ages 18 to 70s; median decade was 30-40) from the Hadza hunter-gather group that resides in the great rift valley in Tanzania. • The Hadza live in small semi-nomadic bands and live in multiple camps throughout the year in proximity to resources. • While the Hadza have their own language, Hadzane, many Hadza are also Swahili speakers. • Due to shifting resources, including land scarcity, the estimated current population of Hadza still hunting and gathering numbers in the low hundreds.
32 29 22 28 12 31
itoshii lajja liget
gigil
greng jai
Data plotted above demonstrate that perceiver ratings found vocal poses of the same category high in similarity. This indicates that there was sufficient statistical regularity in the stimuli. Emotion
Original Cultural Context
Itoshii
Japan
Someone thinks pleasant things about their loved one who has moved away to another camp. They feel itoshii.
Gigil
Philippines
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
Lajja
India
Someone makes a small mistake that others will notice and feels bad, but also acts playful. They feel lajja.
Greng Jai
Thailand
Someone is offered help from others, but does not want it, because it is too much trouble for the others. The person feels greng jai.
Liget
Illongot (Philippines)
Someone works very hard toward a goal, and feels a rush of energy and intense focus. They feel liget.
Gluckschmerz
German
Someone hears that a bad person had some good fortune, and feels upset about it. They feel gluckschmerz.
Data in above table captures the number of data points that remained in the final analyses based on the stringent manipulation check. Not all Hadza participants passed the manipulation check for each of the “novel” emotions. For example, only 21.8% of the participants passed the check for lajja.
Vignette
The experiment will produce above chance agreement in the matching task, indicating that the standard paradigm likely led to false positives in prior research.
PARTICIPANTS
Gigil Gluck Greng Itoshii Lajja Liget
gluckschmerz
BACKGROUND Knowledge about emotions is critical to social functioning and well-being, yet people vary widely in this domain [1]. Emotion concepts vary across cultures [2], making acquisition of new emotion knowledge an important aspect of integrating into a new society (termed emotional acculturation). Some previous research has explored the understanding of non-native emotion words such as Schadenfreude [3] and Amae [4], however these studies did not explicitly attempt to teach these culturally novel concepts to participants. Other literature on concept acquisition, more generally, suggests that words (i.e., category labels) help both children [5] and adults [6] speed learning. Here we examine emotion concept training using emotion terms drawn from other cultures as stimuli. We are using a standard paradigm that has been used in much of the prior literature, as it is possible that the inherent structure of the paradigm itself could possibly have to false positives when researching emotion perception in remote, non-Western cultures.
Category
N out of 55 passing manipulation check
Stimulus development was undertaken to synthetically create non-verbal vocal utterances for “novel” emotion categories. • 10 posers from US and Namibia • Poses (somewhat) arbitrary; form of vocalization developed a priori • Posers directed based on verbal description and guidance/example
Emotion
Vocalization Description
Gigil
High-pitched squeal; “eeeee”
Gluckschmerz
Quick, gruff exhale
Greng jai
Extended intake of breath between closed teeth
Itoshii
Reflective, gentle sigh
Lajja
High-pitched “ooo” with rising intonation
Liget
Focused grunt
*
*
*
● A set of binomial exact significance tests revealed that for three of the “novel” emotion vocalization types, participants’ task performance exceeded what would be expected by chance. ● A significant proportion of trials were removed as a result of failures to pass the manipulation check, leading to some of our statistical tests being underpowered.
DISCUSSION TASK DESIGN STORY COMPREHENSION PHASE Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
What was the story about?
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
What was the story about?
“Manipulation check”
“Manipulation check”
VOCALIZATION TEST PHASE
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
GIGIL
LAJJA
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
LIGET
GIGIL
• Participants completed 6 task blocks. • At the start of the block, participants underwent an extensive manipulation check for understanding of the emotion emotion story. • Participants then proceeded to the task trials. Each emotion category was tested in a separate block. • All design elements mirrored those of Sauter et al.’s 2010 method.
● Our data indicates that the experimental structure of prior literature on emotional universals has features that can create false positives, meaning that prior research on universality may overestimate the prevalence of emotional universals. ● These data are suggestive that emotion concepts can be learned with a minimal teaching paradigm. It is likely that more developed and robust paradigms could be successful in teaching people emotion concepts from other cultures. ● Successfully teaching people about emotion concepts from other cultures can help them to communicate better with individuals with a different cultural background, helping to reduce miscommunication and increase wellbeing [7]. ● Future research should focus on developing more robust paradigms to teach emotion concepts and on re-evaluating prior literature for false positives. [1] Kashdan, T.B., Barrett. L.F., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking emotion differentiation: Transforming unpleasant experience by perceiving distinctions in negativity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 10-16. [2] Russell, J. A. (1991). Culture and the categorization of emotions. Psychological Bulletin, 110(3), 426–450. [3] Cikara, M., Bruneau, E. G., & Saxe, R. R. (2011). Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 149–153 [4] Niiya, Y., Ellsworth, P. C., & Yamaguchi, S. (2006). Amae in Japan and the United States: an exploration of a “culturally unique” emotion. Emotion, 6(2), 279–95. [5] Susan A. Graham, Amy E. Booth & Sandra R. Waxman (2012): Words Are Not Merely Features: Only Consistently Applied Nouns Guide 4-year-olds' Inferences About Object Categories. Language Learning and Development, 8(2), 136-145 [6] Lupyan, G., Rakison, D. H., & McClelland, J. L. (2007). Language is not just for talking: redundant labels facilitate learning of novel categories. Psychological Science,18(12), 1077–1083. [7] De Leersnyder, J., Mesquita, B., & Kim, H. S. (2011). Where do my emotions belong? A study of immigrants’ emotional acculturation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 451–463.
RESULTS
STIMULUS SELECTION/DEVELOPMENT Participants were tested on concepts sourced from “untranslatable” words for emotions across the globe.
HYPOTHESIS
Camp 2
Camp 1
Camp 3
• Participants were 55 individuals (22 women; ages 18 to 70s; median decade was 30-40) from the Hadza hunter-gather group that resides in the great rift valley in Tanzania. • The Hadza live in small semi-nomadic bands and live in multiple camps throughout the year in proximity to resources. • While the Hadza have their own language, Hadzane, many Hadza are also Swahili speakers. • Due to shifting resources, including land scarcity, the estimated current population of Hadza still hunting and gathering numbers in the low hundreds.
32 29 22 28 12 31
itoshii lajja liget
gigil
greng jai
Data plotted above demonstrate that perceiver ratings found vocal poses of the same category high in similarity. This indicates that there was sufficient statistical regularity in the stimuli. Emotion
Original Cultural Context
Itoshii
Japan
Someone thinks pleasant things about their loved one who has moved away to another camp. They feel itoshii.
Gigil
Philippines
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
Lajja
India
Someone makes a small mistake that others will notice and feels bad, but also acts playful. They feel lajja.
Greng Jai
Thailand
Someone is offered help from others, but does not want it, because it is too much trouble for the others. The person feels greng jai.
Liget
Illongot (Philippines)
Someone works very hard toward a goal, and feels a rush of energy and intense focus. They feel liget.
Gluckschmerz
German
Someone hears that a bad person had some good fortune, and feels upset about it. They feel gluckschmerz.
Data in above table captures the number of data points that remained in the final analyses based on the stringent manipulation check. Not all Hadza participants passed the manipulation check for each of the “novel” emotions. For example, only 21.8% of the participants passed the check for lajja.
Vignette
The experiment will produce above chance agreement in the matching task, indicating that the standard paradigm likely led to false positives in prior research.
PARTICIPANTS
Gigil Gluck Greng Itoshii Lajja Liget
gluckschmerz
BACKGROUND Knowledge about emotions is critical to social functioning and well-being, yet people vary widely in this domain [1]. Emotion concepts vary across cultures [2], making acquisition of new emotion knowledge an important aspect of integrating into a new society (termed emotional acculturation). Some previous research has explored the understanding of non-native emotion words such as Schadenfreude [3] and Amae [4], however these studies did not explicitly attempt to teach these culturally novel concepts to participants. Other literature on concept acquisition, more generally, suggests that words (i.e., category labels) help both children [5] and adults [6] speed learning. Here we examine emotion concept training using emotion terms drawn from other cultures as stimuli. We are using a standard paradigm that has been used in much of the prior literature, as it is possible that the inherent structure of the paradigm itself could possibly have to false positives when researching emotion perception in remote, non-Western cultures.
Category
N out of 55 passing manipulation check
Stimulus development was undertaken to synthetically create non-verbal vocal utterances for “novel” emotion categories. • 10 posers from US and Namibia • Poses (somewhat) arbitrary; form of vocalization developed a priori • Posers directed based on verbal description and guidance/example
Emotion
Vocalization Description
Gigil
High-pitched squeal; “eeeee”
Gluckschmerz
Quick, gruff exhale
Greng jai
Extended intake of breath between closed teeth
Itoshii
Reflective, gentle sigh
Lajja
High-pitched “ooo” with rising intonation
Liget
Focused grunt
*
*
*
● A set of binomial exact significance tests revealed that for three of the “novel” emotion vocalization types, participants’ task performance exceeded what would be expected by chance. ● A significant proportion of trials were removed as a result of failures to pass the manipulation check, leading to some of our statistical tests being underpowered.
DISCUSSION TASK DESIGN STORY COMPREHENSION PHASE Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
What was the story about?
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
What was the story about?
“Manipulation check”
“Manipulation check”
VOCALIZATION TEST PHASE
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
GIGIL
LAJJA
Someone sees a small, chubby, lovely baby and wants to squeeze it tightly. They feel gigil.
LIGET
GIGIL
• Participants completed 6 task blocks. • At the start of the block, participants underwent an extensive manipulation check for understanding of the emotion emotion story. • Participants then proceeded to the task trials. Each emotion category was tested in a separate block. • All design elements mirrored those of Sauter et al.’s 2010 method.
● Our data indicates that the experimental structure of prior literature on emotional universals has features that can create false positives, meaning that prior research on universality may overestimate the prevalence of emotional universals. ● These data are suggestive that emotion concepts can be learned with a minimal teaching paradigm. It is likely that more developed and robust paradigms could be successful in teaching people emotion concepts from other cultures. ● Successfully teaching people about emotion concepts from other cultures can help them to communicate better with individuals with a different cultural background, helping to reduce miscommunication and increase wellbeing [7]. ● Future research should focus on developing more robust paradigms to teach emotion concepts and on re-evaluating prior literature for false positives. [1] Kashdan, T.B., Barrett. L.F., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking emotion differentiation: Transforming unpleasant experience by perceiving distinctions in negativity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 10-16. [2] Russell, J. A. (1991). Culture and the categorization of emotions. Psychological Bulletin, 110(3), 426–450. [3] Cikara, M., Bruneau, E. G., & Saxe, R. R. (2011). Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 149–153 [4] Niiya, Y., Ellsworth, P. C., & Yamaguchi, S. (2006). Amae in Japan and the United States: an exploration of a “culturally unique” emotion. Emotion, 6(2), 279–95. [5] Susan A. Graham, Amy E. Booth & Sandra R. Waxman (2012): Words Are Not Merely Features: Only Consistently Applied Nouns Guide 4-year-olds' Inferences About Object Categories. Language Learning and Development, 8(2), 136-145 [6] Lupyan, G., Rakison, D. H., & McClelland, J. L. (2007). Language is not just for talking: redundant labels facilitate learning of novel categories. Psychological Science,18(12), 1077–1083. [7] De Leersnyder, J., Mesquita, B., & Kim, H. S. (2011). Where do my emotions belong? A study of immigrants’ emotional acculturation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 451–463.
