sort of conclusiony bit

Koreans will very likely keep their fiery reputations, and Americans will wear their hearts on their sleeves for long into the future. These differences are indeed the spice of life. This study has shown that both the nature and the nurture approach to emotional communication play a role in the interpretation of communicative acts. Moreover, when an emotional script embedded in our native culture is not enacted by the foreign culture, cognitive dissonance arises. For the individuals experiencing that dissonance, resolving that dissonance will be critical in moving forward toward cross-cultural understanding. For those of us who through our work and personal lives spend time crossing the divides between cultures the ability to better understand and more rapidly appreciate the differences is a great benefit. Moreover finding out what bits and pieces of cross-cultural misunderstanding lie embedded in “less than conscious” elements of our communication process and bringing those elements forward into our conscious awareness can only improve our relationships across cultures.

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.

more discussion

In addition, the participants noted that emotional scripts can require a variety of false expressions. Participant Y pointed out a case of contradictory expressions when the Mediator in one scene seemed “a little anxious and worried, but he was hiding it with laughter.” In another case masked emotions were noted: “The businessman [showed] anxiety, relief, happiness/joy. Also it seemed he was trying to hide his inner/true feelings/thoughts” (participant U). Diminished or exaggerated emotions were also noted in several instances, for instance, participant C remarked, “I completely agree that they are being really fake with him. But at the same time I think they were being quite real about how they feel about the school and how they care about the kids.”

Problems of interpretation arise however, when the emotion expressions displayed (and perceived) do not match the expressions required by the script. In terms of interpretation, the participants were caught in a sort of “chicken or the egg” situation. Do they believe that the person did not appraise the situation—and therefore the appropriate script—correctly, or are they simply expressing inappropriate emotions? Both interpretations were seen. When Mr. Kim does not follow the appropriate cultural script, participant A blames him for inappropriate behavior: “[he seemed] overconfident and, umm… because when the guy introduces himself . . . he was just like, “yeah, yeah” and just keeps eating, got his mouthful, the guy gives him his card and he just throws it in his pocket right away.” Alternatively, a person could misunderstand the situation resulting in dissonance, “He/she said that his/her students were nodding their heads and smiling in the class while they did not understand instructions fully. He went on assuming that they all understood and later found that they didn’t. This made him feel danghwang (surprised and confused)” (participant U).

discussion

While the final results of this study have yet to be complete, some of the clear themes can be discussed.

4.1. The interpretation of emotional meaning is not straightforward.
Much of Ekman’s (Ekman, 1993, 1997, 1999a, 1999b, 2003; Ekman, et al., 1972) basic research into emotion requires individuals to name the emotion that they are seeing. Similarly, in this study the participants were fairly well able to name the emotions they saw, but although most were glad to be able to select their own vocabulary in the naming process, many also had some important difficulties in explaining why they are naming that emotion. Participants frequently used phrases like: “I don’t know,” or “I guess.”
Moreover, all three of the various systems that have been discussed here for interpreting emotion were seen in this study. That is to say participants used paralinguistic interpretations, situational and script based interpretations, lexical interpretations, as well as combinations of the three. The most common cues for interpretation were from different paralinguistic markers: “my first adjective was shy, again and I got that because he was sitting the whole time with his shoulders hunched over” (participant C). However, they also frequently used a variety of situational interpretations: “I didn’t see the movie but know the story, and this made me perceive noonchi (concern for the feelings of others present)” (participant Y). Finally, well much less common lexical interpretations were also seen: “when only the two were talking and he is not, I felt like that’s all flattery” (participant A).

4.2. Emotional scripts play a role.
Emotional scripts are the sorts of preordained patterns for the appropriate communication of emotion in each culture (Planalp, 1999; Saarni, 1989; Tannen, 1990). Similarly, the appraisal of emotion describes how we interpret what the appropriate emotion ought to be (Scherer, 1982, 1999), perhaps based on a cultural script. Unlike direct indications of emotion, scripts are often noted in different ways, for example stereotypes can come to the surface: “Korean people are often compared to as fighting chickens” (participant Q), or those scripts could be indicated through proverbs, “There is a saying that things work if you raising your voice in Korea, and I think raising one’s voice easily seems like a Korean way” (participant Z).

Along the same lines, the participants spontaneously pointed out that Scripts are not entirely rigid and preset. For one, they suggested that emotional scripts have a gendered character: “It is usually a mother who is ‘super-involved’ in their kids’ lives that fights with teachers but it was a father in this clip” (participant V). They also noted that emotional scripts can be embedded in certain cultural acts: “When the parent entered the room angrily, the teacher was running around and making hand gestures wishing other (teachers) fight for/help him, and I thought this was a little Korean. Trying to do it together (and sort of hiding in the crowd) and hoping other teachers deal with parents and not wanting to deal one-on-one with the teacher showed” (participant R).

pragmatism and action

I've been preparing a presentation on action research the last couple of days while at the hospital with Yoojin [he's getting better slowly, we hope he can be set free tomorrow tuesdayy at the latest].

a couple of thoughts from that writing should bring me back to my dissertation, particularly relating to what Peter Reason (2003) was trying to explain about Richard Rorty's pragmatism.. I really a am trying to redescribe something. I think that we all know about emotions -- they clearly fit into the "we all know an emotion, when we see it" category, yet we see different emotions from the same expressions. not always, and maybe not in consistent ways and national culture is hardly the only thing going on with that interpretive process.

how can I redescribe those processes in ways that help people understand one another better?

---- ----- ----
Reason, P. (2003). Pragmatist Philosophy and Action Research: Readings and Conversation with Richard Rorty. Action Research, 1(1), 103-123

wanted to post this section of an article I was reading today:

The effects of cultural exposure on neural activation have also been found in the areas of emotion recognition and inferences of intentions. Neural responses to emotional expressions in Japanese and Caucasian faces by native Japanese participants in Japan and Caucasian participants in the United States were examined by Chiao et al. (2008). Distinct neural responses were found in response to ingroup members, with individuals from both cultures showing greater amygdala activation to faces expressing fear of members of their own cultural groups. Moreover, Moriguchi et al. (2005) also found activation to Japanese fear expressions in emotion-related areas of the brain in Caucasians who had lived in Japan for more than a year. These two studies suggest that exposure to a culture can affect neural responses to emotional expressions. In another study, the ability to infer intentions was evaluated from a “reading the mind in the eyes” task used in studies examining the ability to infer intentions and feelings from pictures of the eyes. This task agrees with traditional tests of theory of mind and has been demonstrated to reliably differentiate between nonclinical samples and populations exhibiting psychopathologic disorders marked by impaired theory of mind (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). Japanese participants showed more activation in the superior temporal sulcus (STS), an area found to be activated in previous neuroimaging studies examining inferences of intentions, when they were judging the intentions of Japanese as compared to American targets from pictures of their eyes. Americans participants showed the opposite pattern, with more STS activation when judging intentions from Caucasian as compared to Japanese eyes (Adams et al., 2009). Thus, there seem to be selective neural responses to cultural ingroup faces, probably due to more exposure to these faces.

here is the link to the full text: http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/18/6/342.full

I often quote Schumann saying something to the effect that psychological behaviors we see and categorize may or may not have neurological representations, and therefore we should be cautious about concluding the absolute veracity of our psychological interpretations, while I simultaneously go about making psychological interpretations :).

it is nice to find this article that seems to support my psychological conclusions on a neurological level! will reference this one (and since I have all the authors' references with links, I hope to read and reference others) in the paper.

final themes (really, I mean it this time!)

I spent the morning revising the themes/codes. this is the final time, I think. but I plan to completely recode the four transcripts, so I could be fooling myself :).

anyway, here they are:

Theme 1. How did they interpret emotion meaning(s)?

• Theme 1.1 [They can’t explain why they “see” the emotion]
• Theme 1.2 [They use a circular definition]
• Theme 1.3 [They use situational interpretation]
• Theme 1.3.1 [Interpretation based on situation in film]
• Theme 1.3.2 [“Reverse” situational interpretation]
• Theme 1.4 [They use a behavioral/paralinguistic interpretation]
• Theme 1.5 [They use a lexical interpretation]
• Theme 1.6 [They use a combination of interpretations] [situational and paralinguistic cues used]
• Theme 1.7 [side note: They use an interpretation embedded in character assessment]. [ie. emotion=characteristic/temperament]

Theme 2. How did scripts play a role?

• Theme 2.1 [Participants recognize the importance of scripts]
• Theme 2.2.1 [Scripts get referenced in proverbs and sayings]
• Theme 2.1.2 [Scripts get referenced in archetypes]
• Theme 2.1.3 [Scripts are gendered].
• Theme 2.1.4 [Scripts can be embedded in certain culturally emotional acts (e.g. “doing noonchi”)]
• Theme 2.1.5 [Scripts can respond to emotional temperament]
• Theme 2.2 [Scripts may require contradictory, masked, or diminished emotional expressions].
• Theme 2.3 [When script is not followed, that creates cognitive dissonance].
• Theme 2.3.1 [Cases of behavior seen dominantly]
• Theme 2.3.2 [Cases where situational appraisal is seen dominantly]
• Theme 2.4 [How do non-natives interpret the scripts of the other]
• Theme 2.4.1 [Non-natives interpret the script accurately]
• Theme 2.4.2 [Non-natives interpret the script inaccurately]
• Theme 2.4.3 [Non-natives interpret the script with partial accuracy!]

Theme 3 How did the focus groups show the social construction of emotional interpretation?

• Theme 3.1 [Participants persuading one another to change their opinion]
• Theme 3.2 [Multiple/complex emotions likely to be “sussed” and discussed]
• Theme 3.3 [The process of “sussing out” the other’s cultural script requires group consideration].

Theme 4 What are the implications for teaching discussed by participants?

• Theme 4.1 [Are movies real?]
• 4.1.1 Movie depictions can accurately represent real life
• 4.1.2 But movie depictions may not be universal
• 4.1.3 Cinema and cinematic effects affect emotional interpretations.
• Theme 4.2 [Questions of linguistics, like language register, diction, and profanity differences may be more important for FL learners].
• Theme 4.3 [FL education’s focus on translation]