Mapping Expressive Differences Around the World: The Relationship Between Emotional Display Rules and Individualism Versus Collectivism
Open accessAbstract
Despite the importance of the concept of cultural display rules in explaining cultural differences in emotional expression and despite the fact that it has been more than 30 years since this concept was coined, there is yet to be a study that surveys display rules across a wide range of cultures. This article reports such a study. More than 5,000 respondents in 32 countries completed the Display Rule Assessment Inventory. The authors examined five hypotheses concerning the relationship between display rules and individualism-collectivism (IC). The findings indicated the existence of several universal effects, including greater expression toward in-groups versus out-groups, and an overall regulation effect. Individualistic and collectivistic cultures differed on overall expressivity endorsement and in norms concerning specific emotions in in-group and out-group situations.
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Cultural variation is observed in social dimensions of emotions such as facial expression recognition, display rules, and subjective feelings of social emotions.
“Accordingly, cultural variation is observed in social dimensions of emotions such as facial expression recognition (Jack et al., 2012;Nelson & Russell, 2013), display rules (Matsumoto et al., 2008) and subjective feelings of social emotions (Kitayama et al., 2006).”
From Bodily maps of emotions are culturally universal (2020) · cites this paper as Matsumoto et al., 2008
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- Authors
- Matsumoto, D., Yoo, S. H., & Fontaine, J.
- Affiliations
- San Francisco State University (US)
- Yale University (US)
- Ghent University (BE)
- Venue
- Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2008-01
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 55-74
- ISSN
- 0022-0221 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-5422
- OpenAlex
- W2140782513
- Cited by
- 864
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 60 · 2025: 76 · 2024: 60 · 2023: 59 · 2022: 63 · 2021: 60 · 2020: 72 · 2019: 53 · 2018: 51 · 2017: 56 · 2016: 47 · 2015: 49 · 2014: 31 · 2013: 31 · 2012: 27
- FWCI
- 30.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Research portal (Tilburg University) (publishedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion)
- Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- display rules, emotional expression, individualism-collectivism, cultural differences, emotion regulation, cross-cultural comparison
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