No abstract

To conduct a cross-cultural test of a theory specifying the appraisals that elicit particular emotions, undergraduates from India and the United States were asked how they appraised events that caused them to feel sadness, fear, or anger. In both cultures there was evidence that an appraisal of powerlessness characterized incidents leading to sadness and fear, rather than anger; and an appraisal that other persons caused negative events characterized incidents leading to anger, rather than sadness or fear. Also, Indians appraised events as less discrepant from what they had wanted than Americans did; this accounted for lower sadness and anger among Indians. Overall, cultural differences in appraisal explained cultural differences in emotion, due to underlying cross-cultural similarities in appraisal-emotion relationships.

This study compared the self-concepts of college students in India to those in the United States by administering the Twenty Statements Test. Self-statements were analyzed in terms of five categories (social identity, ideological beliefs, interests, ambitions, and self-evaluations) and a numberof subcategories (e.g., self-identity, group identity, gender role identity). Results indicated differential use of the categories and subcategories in the two cultures. For example, Americans made more self-evaluation statements, whereas Indians responded more in terms of social identity. Women in both cultures made more frequent use of stereotypical gender characteristics in describing themselves; men had a larger proportion of responses in the self-identity category. However, cross-cultural differences were much greater than gender differences. These findings shed light on major components of the self-concept and underline its culture-specific determinants.