Immediate and adeguate emotional responses to antecedents of 5 emotion-constellations in 6 european countries.

The study focuses on lay theories of emotions (LTE), on ‘immediate’, unchecked emotional responding (feelings; physiological, expressive,visceral reactions; cognitive responses; behaviors & action tendencies), versus its degree of 'adequacy'. The hypotheses were that: LTE are “rich”, including concepts about different aspects of emotions - e.g. hedonic tone, intensity, action tendencies, appraisals; LTE concepts vary as a function of the ‘nature’ of the emotion - e.g. action tendencies for jealousy versus for sadness; LTE concepts are culturally based to some extent - e.g. collectivist vs individualist; the culture of men versus women. The study was carried out in six nations, analizing discrepancies between ‘immediate’ emotional responding versus 'adequate' responding in relation to five emotion constellations.The results showed that emotional discrepancies emerge mostly for the unpleasant emotions within Constellations, especially sadness/despair, and resignation, and especially for serious events. For physiological discrepancies, the largest differences occurred for the unpleasant Constellations (Jealousy, Envy, Sadness), for both events. For cognitive discrepancies, differences emerge mostly for serious events. All constellations showed nation differences in degree of discrepancy as regards difficulty in coping with the event –with Italy and Hungary attenuating it most. Differences merged also for maintaning control, with Denmark attenuating it most, and Italy & Hungary checking responding as more adequate. Behavioral discrepancies were found mostly in controlling emotions and expressing them; the emotion constellation dictated whether differences are related to the serious or the light event, or to both. Envy however did not show Nation differences either for Cognitive or Behavioral, discrepancies, and for neither of the 2 episodes. Pride showed minimum or nul Nation differences.In sum, the study showed that Discrepancies are widespread due to emotional norms. Discrepancy frequency, magnitude, and direction varied according to emotion component (e.g., frequent for feelings, especially negative ones), nature of emotional constellation (e.g., Joy vs. Sadness), ‘seriousness’ and ‘saliency’ of antecedent event, and gender norm-congruency. The results thus showed that cultural differences exhist, but do not always fit the collectivistic-individualistic hypothesis.