When you think of a culture who expressions public emotion who or what do you think of?
I think of a New Yorker yelling at a cab driver,
A Greek wedding,
A United States Southerner expressing American Pride,
A Jewish Bar Mitzvah,
these are just a few of those that are expressing high emotions in public.
We all feel the same emotions but different cultures express them easier in public vs in private.
It is very easy to misinterpret people's emotions from one culture to another.
In private everyone is more likely to express the high emotions everyone has such as, being afraid, angry, annoyed, delighted, distressed, excited, frustrated, disgust, and other emotions similar to those.
With that in mind several cultures won't show emotion in public for example,
Asian Cultures typically don't.
A study was done where American and Japanese participants were asked to rate faces on how intensely they were expressing certain emotions and how intensely the posers were actually feeling said emotion. The American participants, gave higher ratings to the external appearance of emotions. The Japanese participants, assigned higher ratings to internal expression of emotion. In conclusion, depending on cultural contexts, internal turmoil might not necessarily be legible on the face, while an overly excited smile might be hiding only lukewarm enthusiasm.
I guess this is where "Fake it until you make it" comes from.
Being an ESL/ELL Teacher can be a little difficult if you are trying to get a reaction from your students on something in particular if you have several students from a culture that don't show emotions in public.
Keep this in mind.
In Asian cultures, the eyes are typically used to express emotion, while in America, Europe, the Western Cultures the mouth reflects the emotion expressed.
You will learn the telltale signs of emotions in your students over time.
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