WFU Psychology

Batja Mesquita

Education

	University of Amsterdam, 1984
	M.A., University of Amsterdam, 1987
	Ph.D., University of Amsterdam, 1993

Research interests:

One of the distinguishing features of human kind is that all people live in specific socio-cultural contexts. These sociocultural contexts consist not only of ideas and meanings, but also of the embodiment of these ideas in institutions, practices, and artifacts. Participation in these everyday worlds conditions the basic psychological experience. The larger theory on which my research is based is that being part of a culture importantly shapes how we think, feel, and behave. Thus, often without knowing, people feel, think, and behave in ways that reflect their affiliation to their culture.

In my research, I focus on the way emotions are shaped by their sociocultural contexts. One finding in our lab is that emotions importantly vary according to the nature of the relationship goals and practices in the larger sociocultural context. As relationship practices vary across cultures, the emotional experience of emotions varies as well. We have shown this for Japanese, Taiwanese, Mexicans, and Americans. Furthermore, we have shown this for working class and for middle class samples. Emotional experience differs in ways that fit the meanings and practices of relating. Furthermore, differences do not only pertain to people’s self-reports of emotions, but can also be found in the ways people perceive others’ emotional expressions.

Many of the studies in my lab are about the emotional experience and perception. How exactly do emotions vary, and what are the sociocultural conditions associated with these variations? We are also starting to ask follow-up questions, such as: What are the consequences of different emotional experiences for other psychological processes such as perception, memory, and behavior?

Finally, in a new line of research we have started to ask ourselves what happens when people move from one culture to another. If emotions are constituted to fit the cultural context, this means that moving cultures creates a misfit between the emotions socialized and the relationship practices of the new culture. Are people able to change their emotions after they immigrate to another culture? Is there an age at which it is easier to acquire the mainstream culture’s repertoire? Are people who do not acculturate emotionally in fact worse off? The data from our first studies suggest that emotional acculturation in fact predict well-being in immigrants: People whose emotions are unlike the mainstream emotions have more relationship problem sand worse self-reported health. The question then becomes: How can we help these people? Can we promote learning of a new emotional repertoire, or can we, as a multicultural society, accommodate immigrants who feel differently?

Representative Publications:

	Kitayama, S., Mesquita, B., & Karasawa, M. (in press). The emotional basis of independent and interdependent selves: Socially disengaging and engaging emotions in the US and Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
	Mesquita, B., & Leu, J. (in press). The cultural psychology of emotions. In S. Kitayama & D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook for cultural psychology. New York: Guilford Press.
	Mesquita, B., & Markus, H.R. (2004). Culture and emotion: Models of agency as sources of cultural variation in emotion. In N.H. Frijda, A.S.R. Manstead, & A. Fisher (Eds.), Feelings and emotions: The Amsterdam symposium. (pp. 341-358). Cambridge , MA : Cambridge University Press.
	Mesquita, B., & Walker, R. (2003). Cultural differences in emotions: A context for interpreting emotional disturbances. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41 (7), 777-793.
	Mesquita, B. (2002). Emotions as dynamic cultural phenomena. In R. Davidson & H. Goldsmith & K. R. Scherer (Eds.), The handbook of the affective sciences (pp. 871-890). New York : Oxford Univeristy Press.
	Mesquita, B., & Karasawa, M. (2002). Different emotional lives. Cognition and Emotion, 16, 127-141.
	Mesquita, B. (2001). Emotions in collectivist and individualist contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80 (1), 68-74.
	Mesquita, B. (2001). Culture and Emotions: Different approaches to the question. In T. Mayne and G. Bonanno (Eds.), Emotion:Current Issues and Future Directions (pp. 214-250). Guilford Press.