Ancestral Diversity: A Socioecological Account of Emotion Culture

Abstract

Cultural differences in emotion expression, experience, and regulation can cause misunderstandings with lasting effects on interpersonal, intergroup, and international relations. We propose that the ancestral diversity of regions of the world, determined by the migration of humans over centuries, accounts for significant variation in cultures of emotion. We review findings that relate the ancestral diversity of the world’s countries to present-day differences in emotion display rules, the clarity of expressions, and the use of specific facial expressions, such as the smile. Results replicate at the level of the states of the United States. Finally, we suggest that historically diverse contexts provide more opportunities for emotion regulation than less diverse contexts, and we show that members of the former contexts have higher average cardiac vagal tone. We conclude that conditions created by the long-term commingling of the world’s people have predictable effects on the evolution of emotion cultures and encourage future work on questions of causation and mechanism.