Jeanne Tsai conducts culture-based research on emotions, and her findings are useful to anyone attempting to develop places or objects that support desired emotional experiences, such as leisure areas at workplaces. Dawson, reporting on the 2017 International Conception of Psychological Science in Vienna states that:
“Tsai and her collaborators have found that…Cross-culturally people characterize emotions as positive or negative (called ‘valence’) and stimulating or soothing (called ‘arousal’). ‘Ecstatic’ and ‘relaxed’ are both positive-valence emotions, for example, but ‘ecstatic’ is high arousal, while ‘relaxed’ is low arousal. When asked about how they would ideally like to feel, European Americans typically preferred excitement and elation more than did Chinese, who preferred calm and relaxation more than did European Americans. There were no differences in how much European Americans and Chinese reported actually feeling those emotions, however. ‘Cultural factors may shape how we want to feel more than how we actually feel,’ Tsai said. This ideal affect difference shows up in children’s books, magazine ads, and the official portraits of politicians and business leaders. American media figures sported broad, open, teeth-baring ‘excited’ smiles more frequently than did their Chinese counterparts, who more often expressed calmer, closed smiles.”
Joe Dawson. 2018. “Emotions in Context: What We Know About How We Feel.” Observer, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 25-26.
Sally Augustin, PhD,a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.