Experiencing Emotion

This book describes a large-scale, cross-cultural study of emotional experience and emotional reaction which was conducted in Israel and seven European countries: the UK, West Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. Until the publication of this book in 1986, most research on emotion has been conducted under laboratory conditions, but the contributors to this study used a questionnaire approach to gather material covering a wide range of topics. Do certain situations elicit emotion-specific responses? Do emotion-specific symptom and reaction patterns exist? Do the common stereotypes of Northern and Southern emotional responses reflect the existence of real cross-cultural differences in emotional experiences and responses? Four emotions were studied - joy, sadness, fear and anger - and the results provide not only a wealth of quantitative data, but also, at the descriptive level, a fascinating overview of the ways in which people experience emotion.