Listen to a group of adolescents chatting. Ask a mother about her children. Observe a teacher in the company of pupils. Most likely, one would be responsive to the affect in these interactions. Emotion would have animated each narrative, each transaction. In word and tone, posture and move, emotion may be heard and seen. Temperament, disposition, sentiment and mood, feeling and emotion are but distinct features of the mind and body capacity or process subsumed under the rubric affect (Davidson, 1994; Ekman, 1994; Frijda, 1994). The capacity to feel and engage feelings for oneself is evidently biologically gifted (Darwin 1869/1998; 1962; Ekman, 1994, 1999; Le Doux, 1994; 1996; Panskepp, 1994) and socioculturally shaped (Averill, 1994; Scherer, 1994; Smith, 1994; Wellenkamp, 1994).
Individual development, emotional and otherwise, is constituted and canalized by the experience of innumerable encounters in an expanding network of social relations. Personhood and identity are products of the “social mind” (Valsiner&Van der Veer, 2000). The self and our sense of it are largely accepted to be culturally constructed; ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ a unique person is accomplished in a specific spatial, temporal context, itself framed by a cultural history (Paranjpe, 1998). One’s sense of being child or adult, male or female, Indian or other is a cultural – social – personal dynamic.
Intrinsic and critical to the socially constituted /embedded lives we lead are our emotional competencies (and incompetencies). Entry into, and a place in, a group or alliance is formed and regulated by several factors among which may be included personal, emotional attributes. Temperament and disposition are deemed the more stable, trait-like qualities (Davidson, 1994; Kagan, 1994).
1.1 The culture-emotion linkage
Without undermining the biological basis of human behavior, the intimate link between culture and the individual’s behavior must be appreciated. While culture provides the guiding principles, it is in interaction with the social and interpersonal world that the person develops (Valsiner& Van der Veer, 2000).
In joining culture with emotions, one needs to have working definitions of both. Additionally, the notion of self needs inclusion. While emotion lacks from consensus in definition, physiological-somatic, cognitive-appraisal, and action tendency are the components associated. That is, when experiencing an emotional feeling, the person or self has to sense-perceive the elicitor, experience an arousal or change in the internal state, and act, or not act, in consequence on the basis of some more appraisal (Frijda, 1994). Culture too, has attracted a vast range of definitions with less, than more, consensus. Yet the construct is used to refer to meaning systems, shared inter-individually, as well as across generations (Geertz, 1973), and the “faults and fissures that seem to mark out the landscape of collective selfhood” (Geertz, 2000, p.250) and instantiated by companion practices (Markus & Kitayama, 1994). The self has been construed as the confluence of the individual in and across contexts. Even when contexts change, a person’s continued experience of continuity within oneself is a contemporary view of self (Neisser cited in Saarni, 1999).
The intricate connections between culture and mind have been eloquently deliberated (Shweder, 1991; Shweder &Levine, 1984) and dramatically illustrated by Shore (1996). Shore’s inability to define culture, subsequent to a prolonged stay in Samoa, was acknowledged as due to discovering the intangible way mental activity was both means and ends. Geertz’s (2000) quote of philosopher, Andy Clarke “Where does culture stop and the rest of the self begin?”(p.204) serves as a succinct comment.
Markus and Kitayama have been especially active in arguing for the role of culture in shaping the self and emotion. (See Kitayama & Markus, 1994, for a range of essays around culture, self and emotion). Accepting Rosaldo’s (1984) definition of emotions as “self-concerning, partly physical responses that are at the same time aspects of a moral or ideological attitude; emotions are both feelings and cognitive constructions, linking the person, action and sociological milieu” (p. 304), Markus & Kitayama (1994, p. 330) suggest that emotions are “socially shared scripts that enable adaptation to the immediate sociocultural, semiotic environment”. In a theoretical model depicting the processes and mechanisms underlying the cultural shaping of emotion, the researchers identify several components connected by dotted lines, highlighting the “dissolution of boundaries between the inner and the outer, the ideational and the material, the self and society” (p. 341). A brief description of their model, including the major components and the associated features is presented next:
Habitual emotional tendencies incorporate “instrumental action” and subjective affective (emotions, moods) experiences. This incidentally is the only category with locus in the individual.
Individual reality refers to settings (home, school, community and such), and situations specific to the individual’s daily life. Also described as the “local world” it resembles the micro- and meso- systems of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory of human development.
Socio-psychological processes occupy the third segment, within which are assembled the customs, norms, practices and institutions that reflect and promote the core ideas. Specific examples are caretaking practices, linguistic connections, and scripts for social interactions.
Collective reality subsumes core cultural ideas (similar to ‘focal concerns’ as used by Frijda & Mesquita, 1994) reflecting the philosophical or ideological discourse on self, morality and the good. The ecological, economic and socio-political are also enlisted in this frame. The authors add that for a particular individual, cultural realities can exist without his or her even being conscious of it. Yet, the experiences of individuals do feedback into all the layers, reinforcing, challenging and even generating new frames. Often religious reformers offer examples of such powerful feedback. The different aspects of the collective and individual realities are inter-penetrative and the boundaries fuzzy. As an overarching frame of reference in relating culture to emotion this model seems to combine range with flexibility. Taking the stand that emotions are shaped and formed by culture upon biological affordances, the authors make a strong case for a social-construction position developed by Mead and Vygotsky.
Mesquita and Frijda (1992), in a detailed and systematic review of the culture-emotion linkages in theory and research, refer to accessibility and obviousness of core or focal concerns as characteristics that not only contribute to individual certainty and cultural focality but also to the relevant emotional responses. Habitual emotional inclinations and responses and emotion scripts will conform to cultural practices.
Individuals develop “cultural expertise” when in constant exposure to the core ideas as salient concerns. Appraisal of events, according to these almost normative ideas, facilitates the process of shaping the individual’s sense of certainty as well as own orientation to self and society.
Wellenkamp (1994) draws attention to the relevance of the study of ethnotheories of emotion. As examples, are the studies of emotion among the Chinese (Averill& Sunderarajan, 2006; Potter, 1988; Wang, 2006). The influence of Confucian, Tao and Buddhist worldviews on Chinese construal of emotion is traced. Several ethnographic and other accounts have supported the cultural construction of specific emotional themes and responses. Some examples are the often-highlighted case of amae in Japan (Doi cited by Roland,1988; Morsbach & Tylor, 1986), lajjya in Orissa ( Menon & Shweder 1994), anpu among the Tamil (Trawick, 1990) and masti among the Goswamis of Mathura (Lynch, 1990).
Likewise, examining the nexus among culture, emotion and psychopathology Jenkins (1994) observes, that the experience of dysphoric affect is an ethno psychological concern. He supports the view calling for subjecting the DSM to cross-cultural analysis as a way of understanding the cultural conventions underlying the categorization of distress and its management .In fact, Harré (1986), asserts that “even if there are some universal emotions, the bulk of mankind live within systems of thought and feeling that bear little but superficial resemblances to one another” (p.12).
Sociologists and historians too have reported that even in a given culture, emotions change over time. Studies of sadness ( Stearns,1993) and grief (Stearns &Knapp, 1996) illustrative examples. An oft-cited example of the conditioning of emotional repertoire and judgments by the demands of a job is Hochschild’s study of airhostesses (Hochschild cited in Stearns,1993). Similarly, in many societies reactions to someone’s anger would depend on the social status and power structure (White, 2000).
Association between gender and emotion has been at the heart of several investigations (Deaux, 2000). Analysis of data from 37 countries in five continents for seven different emotions by Fischer and Manstead (2000), points to the different cultural constructions of emotion and gender in individualistic and interdependent cultures. Gender differences were pervasive with women in all the countries reporting more intensity, duration and overt expression of emotion. Larger differences in emotional response were obtained in countries that were more individualistic and less traditional.
Catherine Lutz, a leader in the culture-emotion camp has explored the gendering of emotion in some sectors of American culture. Syntactic and discursive analysis of conversations around emotion of a small sample of American white middle class men and women exposed dominance in the theme of women’s nature being emotional. This feature was seen as irrational, chaotic and subjective, to be controlled. At the same time, however, it was competing with the theme of women’s capacity for intimacy, warmth and interpersonal connectivity (Lutz, 1995). Zammuner (2000) notes that in maintaining the dichotomy between rationality and emotionality, femininity is associated with emotionality.
Discursive psychology calls attention to the role of discourse in describing and discussing emotions as also in shaping social relations. Emotion talk, also named emotionology, is another source of cultural variance (Heelas, 1986). In an analysis of the practice, “disentangling” in a Solomon Islands society, White (1993,p.36) demonstrates that the “artful talk” about emotions enables the “transmuting” of “problematic emotions” (e.g. shame, anger).In White’s view emotions need also to be viewed as “ social, outer, and public”(p.36)
Translation of emotion words has been another concern of linguists and culture scholars. In the view asserted by these scholars (e.g.Briggs,1995; Russell, 1991; Wierzbicka, 1994; 1996) translation is inadequate in genuinely representing the delicacy of an emotional experience across cultures. As emphasized by Shweder (1993), differences in cultural narratives preclude the simple comparison of emotional labels. Russell’s (1991) comparison of studies of emotion lexicons, judgments of emotion from facial expressions, and of the dimensions implicit in comparative judgments of emotion led him to conclude that differences in culture and language are reflected in differences in emotion categories. Does this mean that similarities do not exist in emotion categories? The similarities and differences arise from their positioning in the prevailing folk theory of self, of society, of nature, and so on (Holland & Quinn, cited in Russell, 1991; Fischer, Wang, Kennedy & Cheng, 1998). Cultures have been observed to ‘hypercognize’ and ‘hypocognize’ different emotions in accordance to the focal values and practices (Heelas, 1986). An analysis of 350 emotion related words in a Sanskrit–English dictionary noted that distress was the hypercognized emotion and tolerance was the hypocognized emotion (Sibia, Srivastava &Misra, 2003). This dichotomy in their view, is reflective of the Indian ethos of interdependence.
in the individual.
Individual reality refers to settings (home, school, community and such), and situations specific to the individual’s daily life. Also described as the “local world” it resembles the micro- and meso- systems of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory of human development.
Socio-psychological processes occupy the third segment, within which are assembled the customs, norms, practices and institutions that reflect and promote the core ideas. Specific examples are caretaking practices, linguistic connections, and scripts for social interactions.
Collective reality subsumes core cultural ideas (similar to ‘focal concerns’ as used by Frijda & Mesquita, 1994) reflecting the philosophical or ideological discourse on self, morality and the good. The ecological, economic and socio-political are also enlisted in this frame. The authors add that for a particular individual, cultural realities can exist without his or her even being conscious of it. Yet, the experiences of individuals do feedback into all the layers, reinforcing, challenging and even generating new frames. Often religious reformers offer examples of such powerful feedback. The different aspects of the collective and individual realities are inter-penetrative and the boundaries fuzzy. As an overarching frame of reference in relating culture to emotion this model seems to combine range with flexibility. Taking the stand that emotions are shaped and formed by culture upon biological affordances, the authors make a strong case for a social-construction position developed by Mead and Vygotsky.
Mesquita and Frijda (1992), in a detailed and systematic review of the culture-emotion linkages in theory and research, refer to accessibility and obviousness of core or focal concerns as characteristics that not only contribute to individual certainty and cultural focality but also to the relevant emotional responses. Habitual emotional inclinations and responses and emotion scripts will conform to cultural practices.
Individuals develop “cultural expertise” when in constant exposure to the core ideas as salient concerns. Appraisal of events, according to these almost normative ideas, facilitates the process of shaping the individual’s sense of certainty as well as own orientation to self and society.
Wellenkamp (1994) draws attention to the relevance of the study of ethnotheories of emotion. As examples, are the studies of emotion among the Chinese (Averill& Sunderarajan, 2006; Potter, 1988; Wang, 2006). The influence of Confucian, Tao and Buddhist worldviews on Chinese construal of emotion is traced. Several ethnographic and other accounts have supported the cultural construction of specific emotional themes and responses. Some examples are the often-highlighted case of amae in Japan (Doi cited by Roland,1988; Morsbach & Tylor, 1986), lajjya in Orissa ( Menon & Shweder 1994), anpu among the Tamil (Trawick, 1990) and masti among the Goswamis of Mathura (Lynch, 1990).
Likewise, examining the nexus among culture, emotion and psychopathology Jenkins (1994) observes, that the experience of dysphoric affect is an ethno psychological concern. He supports the view calling for subjecting the DSM to cross-cultural analysis as a way of understanding the cultural conventions underlying the categorization of distress and its management .In fact, Harré (1986), asserts that “even if there are some universal emotions, the bulk of mankind live within systems of thought and feeling that bear little but superficial resemblances to one another” (p.12).
Sociologists and historians too have reported that even in a given culture, emotions change over time. Studies of sadness ( Stearns,1993) and grief (Stearns &Knapp, 1996) illustrative examples. An oft-cited example of the conditioning of emotional repertoire and judgments by the demands of a job is Hochschild’s study of airhostesses (Hochschild cited in Stearns,1993). Similarly, in many societies reactions to someone’s anger would depend on the social status and power structure (White, 2000).
Association between gender and emotion has been at the heart of several investigations (Deaux, 2000). Analysis of data from 37 countries in five continents for seven different emotions by Fischer and Manstead (2000), points to the different cultural constructions of emotion and gender in individualistic and interdependent cultures. Gender differences were pervasive with women in all the countries reporting more intensity, duration and overt expression of emotion. Larger differences in emotional response were obtained in countries that were more individualistic and less traditional.
Catherine Lutz, a leader in the culture-emotion camp has explored the gendering of emotion in some sectors of American culture. Syntactic and discursive analysis of conversations around emotion of a small sample of American white middle class men and women exposed dominance in the theme of women’s nature being emotional. This feature was seen as irrational, chaotic and subjective, to be controlled. At the same time, however, it was competing with the theme of women’s capacity for intimacy, warmth and interpersonal connectivity (Lutz, 1995). Zammuner (2000) notes that in maintaining the dichotomy between rationality and emotionality, femininity is associated with emotionality.
Discursive psychology calls attention to the role of discourse in describing and discussing emotions as also in shaping social relations. Emotion talk, also named emotionology, is another source of cultural variance (Heelas, 1986). In an analysis of the practice, “disentangling” in a Solomon Islands society, White (1993,p.36) demonstrates that the “artful talk” about emotions enables the “transmuting” of “problematic emotions” (e.g. shame, anger).In White’s view emotions need also to be viewed as “ social, outer, and public”(p.36)
Translation of emotion words has been another concern of linguists and culture scholars. In the view asserted by these scholars (e.g.Briggs,1995; Russell, 1991; Wierzbicka, 1994; 1996) translation is inadequate in genuinely representing the delicacy of an emotional experience across cultures. As emphasized by Shweder (1993), differences in cultural narratives preclude the simple comparison of emotional labels. Russell’s (1991) comparison of studies of emotion lexicons, judgments of emotion from facial expressions, and of the dimensions implicit in comparative judgments of emotion led him to conclude that differences in culture and language are reflected in differences in emotion categories. Does this mean that similarities do not exist in emotion categories? The similarities and differences arise from their positioning in the prevailing folk theory of self, of society, of nature, and so on (Holland & Quinn, cited in Russell, 1991; Fischer, Wang, Kennedy & Cheng, 1998). Cultures have been observed to ‘hypercognize’ and ‘hypocognize’ different emotions in accordance to the focal values and practices (Heelas, 1986). An analysis of 350 emotion related words in a Sanskrit–English dictionary noted that distress was the hypercognized emotion and tolerance was the hypocognized emotion (Sibia, Srivastava &Misra, 2003). This dichotomy in their view, is reflective of the Indian ethos of interdependence.
1.2 Socialization of emotion: social structure and familial processes
“Society determines children’s understanding of emotions by inducting them into an emotional culture, defining the criteria of emotional competence, and regulating their exposure to emotional episodes” (Gordon, 1989, p. 319). Emotional culture includes the ethnopsychology – folk beliefs, about emotions, and their development in children. The norms of feeling and display, including permissible variation are encoded. Similarly, the vocabulary includes the terms and symbolic metaphors.
The emotional culture may not always accurately describe actual experience and behaviour. In fact, contradictions and deviance are also part of the social fabric. Thus, one can at once view emotion as “natural”, to be expressed, and as “socialized”, to be controlled. Emotions can thus be the message and the medium of socialization.
Russell (1989), Gordon (1989) and Lewis (1989) have discussed the impact of culture and socialization practices on children’s understanding of emotions. Russell, arguing for a culturally scripted view of emotions that guide children’s understanding of emotions, is critical of the “standard view” framing most psychological work. The term “script” has been used by authors to denote “knowledge structure for an event” (Russell, 1989) as well as “response program or behaviour” (Abelson, 1981; Lewis, 1989). The script for emotion is dynamic and multi layered, and not necessarily internally consistent. It is itself embedded in the cultural narratives of personhood. Cultural pathways to the crucial outcome of development, well-being, are maintained by families and communities by enlisting activities that are integrated and emotionally engaging for children (Weisner, 1998).
In examining children’s socialization for emotion, Gordon (1989) uses a structural patterning approach. Children acquire their emotion concepts from the surrounding emotion culture as embodied in the prevalent ethno psychology and vocabulary. Cognitive maturation and “transitions in social experience” (Gordon, 1989, p. 324) join in children developing the knowledge, abilities and skills of competence.
Differential exposure to emotion is an obvious cause for children’s emotional competence. From the larger social perspective, children’s exposure is shaped / constrained by widespread social features and trends (e.g. aspects of social stratification, migration, change in family composition and historical events (e.g. wars, strife, disasters). Social position (e.g. social class, gender, caste) would also canalize one’s emotion exposure. Three structural dimensions of exposure to emotions described by Gordon are sequence, constraint and diversity. Sequence refers to the order in which children in a particular social group are exposed to the components of emotions. Overt discipline, subtle limits, intentional exposure to valued emotions would be constraints on children acquiring the emotional concepts and competencies endorsed by their social group. Similarly, diversity or consistency in exposure to emotion is a function of yet other structural variables, such as distribution of childcare in a family. The larger this network, the more diverse would the exposure be. Further, Gordon’s (1989) delineation of the influence on these dimensions of exposure, of variables such as household composition, age grading of the life span, and the entry of children into the work arena, is instructive of the structural issues in emotion socialization. For instance, shifts in the segregation of children from the adult spaces in alignment with economic mobility have constrained children’s exposure to emotions. Placing children in the care of full-time mothers (while fathers go out to work) or female teachers is seen as yet another influence on exposure
At the everyday proximate level, the family, as the site of emotion socialization has attracted much attention. Parents have been observed as filters, coaches and managers of their children’s lives (Elias, Tobias, &Friedlander,1999). Their mediating role, through didactic teaching, modeling appropriate emotion behaviour and reinforcement strategies is the stuff of the everyday “intersubjectivity” (Ratner & Stettner cited in Saarni, 1999).
Parents’ “meta-emotion” or implicit beliefs and feelings about their emotions have been observed to influence their preschool children’s social and academic competence or inadequacy (Hooven, Gottman & Katz, 1995). Emotion coaching is a term Gottman and Declaire (1997) use to include five emotion related skills used by parents in interactions with their young children. They provide active guidance and support (scaffolding) to their children’s emotional experiences, paving the way for their future emotional intelligence. The mediating role of the family in regulating children’s emotional arousal and expressive behaviour among peers is highlighted by Saarni’s (1999) review of literature. Particular styles of socializing children by parents have also been linked to their efficacy in peer relations. Contentious disagreements and power assertive discipline have been associated with conflictual peer relations.
Distinguishing between conceptualizing of emotion and experiencing emotion, Russell (1989) contends that children continue to develop their “theory” of emotion. Researchers too have their “scripts”, to describe “recognition”, “accuracy” and “correctness” of emotional processing, often emanating from the “standard view” (dominantly Western) mentioned earlier. This “standard view” assumes that:
Emotions divide naturally into a small number of discrete kinds (e.g. Ekman’s “basic” emotions).
Languages using different terms denote the same “natural kinds” e.g. fear, anger, emotion words thus can be translated one to one between languages.
Human beings easily recognize the natural kinds of emotion in themselves and in others. Children, making errors, gradually outgrow them.
Much anthropological as well as cultural psychological work has demonstrated the non-equivalence of terms, the multiple referents to single terms as well as the difficulties in translating emotion words. Russell’s(1991) comparison of emotional language categories across cultures highlights the scripting of emotion concepts, creating a network of concepts.
In describing socialization of emotion, Saarni (1983; 1999;2000) adopts Lewis and Michalson’s schema of “components of emotion”. The components include elicitors, receptors, states, expressions and experience of emotion. Elicitors are “the stimuli” or perceived causes of one’s emotion. These are clearly reflective of the social and cultural codes. A typical category of elicitor is food, wherein one group’s food is another’s poison! With reference to children’s developing competence, age has been shown to influence the level of emotional awareness (Saarni, 1999). ‘Emotional receptors’ have been construed as “affordances” which mediate between the individual and the elicitor. The biological software, such as temperament, arousability and attentional behaviours are seen as the basis for individual difference or style of response (e.g. Bugental; Eisenberg et. al. cited in Saarni, 1999). Kapur, Hirisave,Reddy, Barnabas,and Singhal (1997) have attempted to find linkages between infant temperaments as classified by Western theory with the triguna model of health posited by Ayurveda. Moderating influences may include specific reorganization of the diet, as in Ayurveda, physical exercise, or for that matter, administering Ritalin to children assessed as having ADHD.
‘Emotional states’ refer to the bodily changes that accompany arousal / response. The associated physiological, neurological, and biochemical activity has been studied for different emotions (Levenson,1994; Levenson, Ekman & Friesen, cited in Saarni,1999). The role of the social in influencing this aspect of emotional experience is quite obvious. Caregivers, by touch, the bottle, or a sweet, often handle visible somatic activity, as in a child’s distress. Children do receive assistance and advice to “calm down” when they exhibit hypertension or pallor. It may be noticed that solutions are often, but not exclusively, somatic. Verbal associations between the feeling state and the perceived cause have also been found helpful. For example, a crying child may also be reassured, “you are unhappy, or sad, because you were not able to play”. Perhaps several dysfunctional routes to managing affect are learnt. ‘Emotional expression’ as a component of emotional life is perhaps especially significant, since it has to do with manifestation, or display. What to express, to whom, where and when is often at the base of one’s interpersonal life. Children, young and novice, learn the culturally configured display rules, which are the beliefs about emotional expression. Modifying emotional behaviour requires the use of different strategies.
Strategies identified as “prototypical” in Western society are “minimization”, or reducing one’s display, “maximization” or exaggeration of display, “masking” or adopting a neutral expression, and “substitution” or dissemblance (feel one way ,express a different way) suggested by Ekman and Friesen, (cited in Saarni, 1999,p.195). One could visualize that children across cultures would develop these strategies, with differences manifesting themselves in their preferential use. The “stoic” face would be characteristically different from the more “expressive” face.
‘Emotional experience’ has been viewed by Lewis and Michalson as the most cognitive one (cited in Saarni, 1993, 1999). The emotion lexicon and its usage to guide one’s feelings as well as interpret others’ feelings are central to this component. Constructing emotional life through language is both an individual’s developmental task as well as a feature of the socio-cultural web of influence. The confluence of cultural scripts and individual competence may be observed in this component. While the emotionology of the culture could be seen as enabling of the individual’s efficacy or a condition like alexithymia would highlight the individual’s dysfunctionality. According to Saarni, emotional expression and experience have especial salience for interpersonal communication. These two aspects have also received greater research attention.
1.3 Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Competence
In reconceptualizing the link between emotion and reason, the construct Emotional Intelligence was first enunciated by Salovey and Mayer (1990). Describing their construct as a likely candidate for a “unitary intelligence” meeting the traditional standards (Mayer, Caruso and Salovey, 2000) after sustained academic research, the authors’ current definition reads as follows:
Emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. (Mayer &Salovey, 1997, p.4)
Daniel Goleman’s well-timed book, Emotional Intelligence (1995) was a runaway bestseller. Emphasizing the power of emotional intelligence over the traditional academic intelligence, Goleman’s claim seemed to have triggered off a cultural trend, a “zeitgeist” (Mayer, Salovey & Caruso, 2000, p.92). Goleman’s model of emotional intelligence included the abilities of “self-control, zeal and persistence, and the ability to motivate oneself” (Goleman 1995, p.28).
Yet another model of emotional intelligence was that offered by Reuven Bar-On in 1997. In exploring the general area of emotional and social intelligence, Bar-On’s Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ – i) was the first -to -be published assessment instrument (Bar – On, 2000). It reflected his view of emotional intelligence as an array of “ noncognitive capabilities, competencies and skills that influence one’s ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures”. Differentiating their model as a “mental abilities model” from the “mixed models” of Goleman, and Bar-On, Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2000,) contend that, “… emotional ability is the mental ability that lurks amidst the emotions ” (p.413). A footnote by Mayer, Salovey & Caruso (2000,p.396), discloses that the term emotional intelligence is historically older than its current construals, appearing in Piagetian writing on affect and intelligence!
The conceptual resemblance of the skills included in the various descriptions of emotional intelligence are traced in modern psychology to Thorndike’s concept: social intelligence. Other related constructs in contemporary literature on intelligence and emotion are emotional creativity (Averill, 2000),experiential intelligence andconstructive thinking(Epstein,1993), personal intelligences (Gardner,1993),social competence (Rose-Krasnor, 1997), emotional competence (Saarni, 1989) and practical intelligence (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2000).They appear as different avatars of a broad – band somewhat elusive ability linking the individual to the social. Notably, there is an attempt at widening the construal and role of intelligence as also of emotion.
Neuroimaging advances have enabled mapping of the brain, contributing dramatically to an enhanced understanding of the neural route and biosocial role of emotions ( Bechara, Tranel, & Damasio,2000; Le Doux, 1996). The amygdala has been identified for its almost singular role in processing emotions and storing emotional memories out of the reach of the cortex. In Le Doux’s view emotional feelings involve many more brain systems than thoughts. The amygdala’s greater influence on the cortex than vice versa offers a structural argument that tilts the balance in favour of emotion. Projecting for the future, as evolving primates, the expansion of neural connections, and /or increased connections between the amygdala and the cortex, “the struggle between thought and emotion”(p.303) may yet resolve into a harmonious integration.
Envisaged as a construct by Carolyn Saarni (1989) Emotional Competence is a close kin of Emotional Intelligence. Attributing the first usage of the expression to sociologist to Steven Gordon (1988) in his description of children’s socialization, Saarni defines it pithily as “the demonstration of self-efficacy in emotion-eliciting social transactions”(Saarni, 2000, p.68). Incorporating the concept of competence from White (1959) and the concept of self-efficacy as enunciated by Bandura (1977), Saarni has garnered substantial empirical evidence as well as a long and apparently rich experience as a clinically trained developmental psychologist. Her writings (e.g.1988, 1999, 2000) are liberally punctuated with vignettes and ‘thick descriptions’ of children’s emotional experiences and developing competencies. The developmental perspective Saarni charts (2000) is an especially valuable contribution.
The inclusion in a 1971 Indian reprint of a textbook entitled Psychology and Effective Behaviour authored by James Coleman in 1960, of a separate chapter on Emotional Competence along with chapters on Intellectual Competence and Social Competence, was a pleasant personal rediscovery and reiteration, of the meaningfulness of this dimension of human development. Coleman’s description of the components of emotions includes the individual’s patterns of emotional experience, expression, and control of emotion. Though there is no attempt at defining emotional competence, the delineation points to the individual’s well-being and good function in a particular frame of reference.
In Saarni’s schema of emotional competence, the primary contributors are the self or ego identity, one’s moral self or disposition as also one’s developmental history. Quite clearly, these elements are inter-woven, besides being anchored in one’s context and culture. Embedding emotional life in a time-space grid, emotional competence maybe seen both as process and entity. In a different place and different time, one must anticipate inter-individual variations, as well as, intra-individual fluctuations. The components of Emotional Competence are an array of eight skills encompassing awareness, regulation and display of emotions. The effects or consequences of emotional competence have been identified in the ability to “manage one’s own emotions” (p. 5), “sense of subjective well-being” (p. 6) and “adaptive resilience” (p.6). Expanding on each of these constructs, Saarni (1999) draws extensively from other relevant research. Her book titled The Development of Emotional Competence is a rich and lucid detailing of each of the eight skills of emotional competence as they develop through the periods of childhood and adolescence. In stating that her work has its moorings in the Western context, Saarni illustrates cultural influences on each of the skills of emotional competence. Saarni’s list of eight skills is outlines below along with the caveat that the skills are interactive, context-specific and reflective of world-views. In other cultures, this list may will be modified and given new and distinct meanings. Yet it may be safe to assume that affect and its regulation does concern every community.
1.4 The skills of Emotional Competence
Skill 1. Awareness of one’s emotions
The primary and basic capacity for a subjective experience in response to an eliciting event or relationship has to be noticed. Developing levels of self-awareness includes that of noticing one’s multiple, even conflicting, emotions. It would also include becoming aware of the possibility of selective inattention to one’s emotions, especially in the face of vulnerability. The intricate and often unclear linkage between context and an individual emotion may be understood when we notice ourselves responding in diametrically opposing ways to similar elicitors. Implicated in this skill is the self as the experiencer or subject, as also the knower or object. In a sentence, I must know what I am feeling. Infants may respond emotionally, but it is perhaps only in the latter half of the first year that “some sort of proto-awareness” manifests. (Saarni, 1999, p.81).
With age and experience, this first skill is expanded and honed. Individual and gender-based differences permeate and manifest the development of this and every subsequent skill of competence.
Skill 2. Ability to discern and understand others’ emotions
Making sense of others’ emotions requires a reading of situational and expressive cues, which in turn are also culturally rendered as meaningful. In reading and assessing the emotions of another, one has to draw upon one’s own awareness, as also knowledge of emotions: their common causes and common reactions.
The more perceptive and empathic person would accurately infer beyond the obvious. As in the earlier skill, the multiplicity of emotions, their subtleties and nuances, entails differing degrees of awareness to be mapped on to one’s social skills. It would require the relative freedom from one’s subjective emotional arousal along with an interest in the other.
In developing this competency, infants use social referencing strategies including scanning the face of the other as well as that of their caregivers to make meaning of a situation. Decoding the other’s facial expression (or its absence), understanding the common situational causes of emotion, discovering that the others have “inner states” (intentions, beliefs, feelings), taking into account unique information about the other while understanding their responses as well as developing a lexicon for communicating emotional experiences in a socially comprehensible manner are the micro-skills Saarni enlists. Emotional labeling is rated as an especially facilitative factor in developing emotional competence from early childhood on. Individual variations as also gender differences have been documented. Children high on social competence measures have been observed to be enhanced in their understanding of emotion in others (e.g. Denham, McKinley, Couchoud & Holt, 1990)
Cultural influences in the nurturing and shaping of this skill may be seen in the interpretation of, and relative emphasis on, emotional cues. An illustration of the effect of values on emotion socialization is provided by Cole and Tamang’s study (1998) of two subcultures in Nepal: the Tamang Buddhist and the Chhetri Brahmin. The Tamang children’s calm, placid, low-arousal demeanour vis-à-vis the more excitable and therefore more regulated conduct of the Chhetri children have been linked to the different child rearing beliefs and practices among these communities.
Whereas gender was not observed as differentially reflected in understanding others’ feelings, attending to the others’ emotional experiences appeared to favour girls (e.g. Meerum Terwogt & Olthof, 1989; Saarni, 1989) Girls’ social competence was more closely linked to emotional literacy (Custrini & Feldman, 1989; cited in Saarni, 1999).
The differences have been attributed to sex - role socialization within the familial and cultural contexts. Additionally, the notion of gender-schemata has been invoked to explain gender differences in perception of others’ emotional experiences. Gender schemata refer to one’s personal scripts for appropriate sex-role behavior. Thus, our encoding and decoding of another’s emotions are influenced by our already held stereotypes.
Skill 3. The ability to use the vocabulary of emotion and expression
The critical role of language in shaping and developing the mind and its evolutes cannot be overstated. An emotion lexicon promotes the conceptual and behavioural capacities. The skill to use the language of emotions enhances one’s ability to manage and regulate one’s own internal feelings and external display. Labeling emotions, talking about feelings, one’s own as well as of others, in terms and images available in one’s context enriches interpersonal experience and efficacy. A space shared through a common language of emotion, as talk, art forms or literature, enables the evolving identity.
Children, from late infancy on, acquire the scripts and narratives of emotion through continuous engagement with various social and emotional experiences. These scripts provide conceptual schemata for anticipating and predicting event sequences. We learn the scripts related to different emotions in general as instantiated by a culture as well as the specific variations and nuances afforded by one’s life space. Saarni (2000), uses the term “emotional thumbprint” to highlight the uniqueness of individuals’ narratives of their emotional lives. Individual concerns and values are formed, embedded and expressed through personal narratives. In this context, alexithymia has been observed as a clinical condition of impoverished emotion language and associated with impaired social and adaptive functioning. Physiological and severe childhood traumas have been implicated whereby neuro-psychological circuits are damaged, with concomitant personality disorders (Taylor & Bagby, 2000).
Skill 4. The capacity for empathic and sympathetic involvement in others’ emotional experiences
Much less serious is the case of children displaying differing levels of social incompetence. Interventions aimed at enriching the individual’s communicative, including lexical, repertoires have been useful. Developmental studies have traced children acquiring the labels, scripts and narratives afforded by their personal and cultural contexts (Kuebli, Butler & Fivush, 1995; Wellman, Harris, Banerjee & Sinclair, 1995). Cultural influences on the acquisition of emotion lexicon may be seen even in the labeling of feelings, as also the use of language in regulating and expressing emotion (e.g. Russell, 1991; Wierzbicka, 1994).
To understand another’s perspective encompasses cognitive as well as emotional skills. Yet on several occasions one can sense a gap between intellectual comprehension and affective connection. To feel for the other, to be able to feel with the other, requires considerable pro social orientations. When the response transcends person, and place, that is, when we respond with empathy to people in another space, an ethos of compassion and personal integrity prevails. For that matter, when one seeks the company and counsel of a local elder, a healer, or a guru, it is reaching out to their perceived superior empathic involvement and compassionate wisdom.
Skill 5. The ability to differentiate internal subjective emotional experience from external emotional expression
Emotional display and dissemblance are nodal skills involved in successful interpersonal life. Our public face is often not the private one. One is seldom able to always match inner subjective feeling and its external manifestation. On numerous occasions, it is both self-saving as also socially sensible to dissimulate and dissemble one’s feelings from their externalization. Display rules may be seen to be both culturally constituted, whereby there is a group consensus, as also personally constructed. Enhancement and maintenance of self-esteem and also that of one’s affiliates is a task in emotion display management. In the literature cited by Saarni, the display and dissemblance strategies dominantly address aversive or negative feelings. In her own study, school going 6-11 year old, were given a gift, which was disappointing. The children’s responses typified the cultural script of “looking agreeable” even if disappointed. A commonplace example would be that of students greeting a teacher in a respectful manner, and turn around and make an impolite facial expression or gesture.
The demonstration of the capacity to acquire various strategies of managing emotional display and emotion regulation incorporates a tacit understanding of meta-emotion or feeling about feeling. Hooven, Gottman and Katz (1995) report a complex and detailed analysis of parental meta-emotion as it influences their children’s emotional outcomes, with focus on management of anger and sadness. Parents high on meta-emotion skills of emotion coaching had less belligerent or hostile marital interactions, and their children, aged 8yrs were in better physical health. Their analysis reiterates the need for family relationships to be emotion inclusive.
A function of emotion display is the display of interpersonal life (Saarni & Weber, 1999). In a culture like India’s, positive feelings of joy and pride in achievement of self and familial others would require either masking or toning down of the display lest they incur envy and jealousy.In studying beliefs related to emotion display among college going Indian youth Jain(2001) observed an unwillingness to even display excitement,lest things go out of control,and avert others’negative responses. The ubiquitous “evil eye” (nazar) must be avoided. It is not uncommon for growing children to be admonished if they display “undue” positive emotion. Regulation of affect, at least partly through regulation of behaviour is a cultural concern. In the arena of personal display rules, deception has been named as a form of idiosyncratic dissimulation in a “particular and immediate situation to mislead” about one’s emotional experience. The hoped- for outcome is either of some advantage or negotiating some disadvantage. A common example is of children suppressing their genuine anxiety or outrage at a teacher’s or other elder’s unfairness in the belief that the consequences would be more aggressive. In manipulating one’s external response, there is use of strategies such as exaggeration, (e.g. the toddler crying louder and longer when the caregiver is spotted; laughing disproportionately to a teacher’s joke; singing to oneself in the dark or when alone) and minimization, or toning down one’s expressive behaviour (e.g. smiling when one actually wants to laugh). Neutralization is another strategy referring to an impassive or poker-faced look, while substitution involves putting on a look contrary to one’s feelings, such as looking calm despite feeling distressed. Quite clearly, these manipulations contribute to more effective self-presentation and social adaptiveness. Children become increasingly more sophisticated in this skill, with maturing musculature and concomitant control, enhanced cognitive and linguistic representation and of course the motivation to enact these display rules appropriately.
In addressing the difficulties faced by socially immature and dysfunctional children, Saarni (1999) speaks of emotionally disturbed children including those with Attention Deficit Disorder, depressed children, at-risk children, lonely children and those with autism. The mismatch between the children’s emotion management capacities and socially valued behaviour appears to be the most common observation. Details and specific characteristics within each category do differ, pointing to different interventions.
In examining cultural differences in emotion management, Mesquita and Frijda (1992) provide a comprehensive review, and comment that in emotion regulation, one may see salient cultural variations. Thus, doing the right thing within a culture requires that the children develop their skills in filtering what they feel and how they express that feeling, including that of non-verbal communication. Children and adults continuously to hone their skills on the basis of lessons they learn from group approval as well as interpersonal conflict.
With reference to gender and emotional display, an Indian teenage girl’s exclamation on watching a bride leaving home after the wedding may illumine the interface between gender, culture and emotion display: “She did not even shed one tear. She went smiling. Of course her father and mother cried.” Again one may be familiar with the humiliated teenage male student who makes objectionable gestures and funny faces at the offender (the teacher) – sometimes even at the cost of increasing the risk of further punishment.
Skill 6. The capacity for adaptive coping with aversive emotions and distressing circumstances
This skill entails using self-regulatory strategies that ameliorate the intensity or temporal duration of distressing emotional states. Included in this skill are three related aspects: the self, the emotional experience, and the physical and social environment. How does one determine that adaptive coping with a stressor had occurred? One appears to have managed one’s emotional behaviour and feel satisfied, but discovers it is short-lived. We still have to deal with the internal experience- the arousal and the intensity. Second, one could note that the inciting situation is under control, yet one’s own subjective state could continue to be distressing. Thirdly, the stress inducing circumstance may not change but our own feeling- state may not be that intense any more.
Coping effectively does not necessarily mean instant bouncing back to a “happy” state. It would entail a long–term perspective too, wherein, in the long run, one feels efficacious and vindicated, after a period of personal suffering. An aversive emotion, per se, need not be devalued. It should have served the need for a moral and just stance of the self. For instance, when punishing a child for some misdemeanour, a parent may well feel upset. Yet in serving the long-term interest of the child, some internal turbulence may have to be tolerated. Another example could be the child having to forego watching a game or an outing in view of an impending examination.
In short, self-regulation and emotion regulation are perceived to be intrinsic to emotional competence. Perception of one’s control over the disturbing situation may be influence the choice of strategy. The general belief in control and agency of the self in the Western context is held responsible for the resultant self-conscious emotions of pride, shame or guilt. Saarni (1999) defines self-regulation as “the ability to manage one’s actions, thoughts and feelings in adaptive and flexible ways, across a variety of contexts, whether social or physical” (p.220). Emotion regulation is “the ability to manage one’s subjective experience of emotion, especially its intensity and duration, and to manage strategically one’s expression of emotion in communicative contexts” (p.220). A sense of well-being, self-efficacy and feeling connected to others are seen as being nurtured by “optimal” self and emotion regulation.
Saarni’s (1997) investigation of perceptions of coping strategies among 6 to 12 year- olds yielded an array of strategies. Those strategies valued as more adaptive were:
problem solving,
support seeking including help and solace,
distancing or avoidance,
internalizing, and
externalizing.
In addition to these strategies, were emotion-focused strategies, which dominantly address the feeling state. The person may use the positive strategies, of substitution or distraction, cognitive reframing, and cognitive blunting, or negative strategies, including avoidance of context or feeling, denial, and dissociation of self from the situation.
In the development of self and emotion regulation, temperament has a prime place, wherein the dimensions of arousability and soothability contribute to emotion regulation in infants and young children. The infant’s disposition manifests in a set of “emotion dynamics”, identified by Thompson (1991, 1994) as intensity of emotion, lability or hedonic tone generated, latency or arousal, persistence or duration, and recovery. The social and caregiving dynamics that interact with a maturing cognition and physiology influence the child’s characteristic patterns of reaction. Needless perhaps to add, early attachment experiences and internal working models are crucial to the development of one’s affect and self-regulation skills.
In the long run too, family-of-origin empathy, warmth and responsiveness to the child’s emotions seem especially salient in later coping competence. Further, socially competent and popular children are noted to have a wider range of flexible coping strategies. Conversely, children or adolescents identified as depressed, abused and problematic are reported to display maladaptive and poorly developed coping skills (Saarni, 1999).
Age and gender have also been linked to coping styles. With regard to age, despite differences in research parameters, Saarni suggests that by the age of 10 years, given normal family lives, children would have acquired the cognitive complexity required to generate a variety of coping strategies. Gender differences in actual coping have been observed and attributed to sex-role socialization. In general, girls in the North American research samples tended to prefer emotion focused strategies (Saarni, 1999). Internalizing behaviours, such as self-blame and worrying, were more used by girls, whereas boys resorted to expressive and externalizing behaviors. In construals of masculinity-femininity, emotionality is a choice element. It is not uncommon to hear women being described as more emotional. Studies of gender and emotion also point out to the differential values assigned to male and female emotion as they intersect with culture, social class, historical period, and ethnicity (Brody, 2000;Fischer&Manstead, 2000;Shields, 2000).
Finally, in looking at the linkage between culture and coping strategies, it may seem repetitive to assert that given cultural differences in the scripts for self and emotion, coping strategies too would vary. Saarni’s vignettes of two 10 year old boys, one a North American and the other Japanese, coping with the deaths of their 13 year old brothers on the operation table are illustrative. The American boy’s mourning lasts a few weeks following which, he puts away his brother’s belongings and charts his own individual path, different from the brother’s. The Japanese, boy and his family cry together, build a memorial and try to perpetuate the presence of the older brother by thinking of him, praying for him and adopting some of his ways. In these vignettes, the nodal emotion, sadness upon personal bereavement, is a private, individual emotion for one culture and shared by the family for the other. A quick return to normalcy and moving on is contrasted with a more extended, elaborate and expressive response.