This paper compares affective meanings of various stereotyped social groups in U.S., German, and Japanese cultures along the three basic dimensions of emotional experience (evaluation, potency, and activity). Analyses exploring similarities in affective meanings between respondents revealed considerable consensus within cultures, but less across cultures. These analyses indicated greater consensus for the U.S. and German sample than for the Japanese sample, supporting past research which indicates that Japanese social perception is more contextualized than in Western cultures. Analyses of cross-cultural differences also identified meaningful patterns of culture-specific deviation, interpretable in terms of the placement of each national sample on cultural dimensions such as power distance, masculinity, and individualism/collectivism. We argue that affective meanings reflect the social order of specific cultures, making variations in consensus significant as affective meanings guide intergroup behavior and emotion.
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