Ideal Affect: Cultural Causes and Behavioral Consequences

Abstract

Most research focuses on actual affect, or the affective states that people actually feel. In this article, I demonstrate the importance and utility of studying ideal affect, or the affective states that people ideally want to feel. First, I define ideal affect and describe the cultural causes and behavioral consequences of ideal affect. To illustrate these points, I compare American and East Asian cultures, which differ in their valuation of high-arousal positive affective states (e.g., excitement, enthusiasm) and low-arousal positive affective states (e.g., calm, peace-fulness). I then introduce affect valuation theory, which integrates ideal affect with current models of affect and emotion and, in doing so, provides a new framework for understanding how cultural and temperamental factors may shape affect and behavior.

The cultural construction of emotions

“…When encountering similar situations, people in different cultures also appraise these situations in ways that help them to fulfill their cultural tasks. For instance, American and Japanese participants remembered situations of success and failure differently [27]. American participants attributed success to themselves and failure to others; Japanese participants attributed success to themselves as well as the situation and failure to themselves.…”

“…Individuals seek out situations that foster emotions that are useful to culturally central tasks [22,27,28] in the same way that they cultivate emotions that are useful to other types of tasks at hand [29,30]. However, cultural construction of emotions goes beyond either seeking out desired emotions or avoiding condemned emotions.…”

Daily variability in working memory is coupled with negative affect: The role of attention and motivation.

“…Future studies may take into consideration that there are interindividual and situational differences in what ideal affect is (Tamir, 2009;Tsai, 2007). For example, there are situations in which people are oriented toward contra-hedonic states (Riediger, Schmiedek, Wagner, & Lindenberger, 2009;Tamir, 2009).…”

Russians Inhibit the Expression of Happiness to Strangers: Testing a Display Rule Model

“…to feel, what expressions should look like, how emotions should be labeled, and how and when emotions should be displayed (Matsumoto, 1990;Mesquita & Frijda, 1992;Tsai, 2007).…”