Sunday, April 18, 2010

a bit more discussion

One of the important questions of this research is how well do the non-Koreans interpret Korean emotional expressions. Predictably enough, sometimes the North Americans got it right, sometimes they were wrong and sometimes they got it partially correct. As part of the research methodology, the North Americans were informed of areas where they had made the same interpretations as the Korean informants, as well as where their interpretations differed. Their responses to the similarities and differences was telling in important ways. First when the non-native participant interpreted the emotions correctly, for any reason (ie, the two cultures share similar scripts, or the participant had developed sufficient understanding of the other culture), no one including the focus group facilitator felt cognitive dissonance; therefore, the group tended to move on in the discussion. When the participants did not interpret correctly—whether they were thoroughly of base, or they had simply misinterpreted the intensity—discussion always ensued.

One example illustrates both cases. In the scene where a parent interrupts a faculty meeting to accuse Mr. Kim of bribe taking and extortion of his son, the participants were fairly confused about the interpretation of situation and the emotions expressed:

Participant B: [When the clip was played without sound] I thought, I was thinking only anger. But when it came on again for the first few seconds I was thinking… “drunk anger”? (laughter) I’m not sure (more laughter)

Participant A: The only thing I can think of is that the teacher did something to his daughter.

(Overlap PB: yeah… that was on my)

Participant A: You see I was thinking that there is no other… which might be a woman thing (Participant D: laughter) I don’t know but I was just like what else can get a parent that angry, but then he talked about money and I was like “okay… I guess not”


Then later as part of the same discussion the question of appropriate intensity comes up:

Participant A: If I knew the situation, so I thought that maybe he had done something with his daughter. Had I known that for sure, my answer for how high is the anger would have been would have been would have been higher, do you understand? Then when I hear later it’s about money, I’m like “oh, he’s angry” but come on it’s money. That’s my judgment. … Come on, because I originally thought it was worse.


Clearly in this instance the participants required a good deal of conversation work to come to terms with the differences between their North American interpretation of the emotional expressions in this situation and the one suggested by the Koreans.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Eric, how are you? That is fascinating that people from different cultures interpret the same situation differently. I guess reading emotional reactions is complex.
    When I say positive things with a Korean Audience they laugh about it. When I joke about negative things then they get serious. I think in North America people will joke about negative things more and don't worry as much about offending people. In Korea, there seems to be a higher level of politeness or respect. Cheers, Chad

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  2. Yeah Chad, I had an experience of "black humor" not going over well in Japan once. We had been driving on a really narrow dirt road out between the rice fields once after it had been raining. When we knew we were lost and decided to turn the car around, it got stuck dead center spanning the road and sank down to the axles in the mud. Later, when we came back with the tow truck driver, seeing the little car stuck in the mud like that, I couldn't help but laugh. Unfortunately, that laughter did not match "the appropriate Japanese emotional script"!!

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