Fear and anxiety across continents: The European and the American way

Abstract

An on‐going debate in cross‐cultural emotion research distinguishes between two schools of thought: universalists and differentialists do not agree to what extent emotions, particularly so‐called basic emotions, are experienced and expressed similarly or differently across cultures. A survey study with subjects from Europe (Austria) and the US (Florida) yielded qualitative and quantitative data about fear and anxiety experiences of 334 respondents. The results showed that ‘feeling rules’ for fear and anxiety differ across cultures. Emotional experience and expressiveness, causal attributions and coping modes were significantly different for the European and the American respondents. Also, anxiety and fear, although they are often conceptualized as one, deserve to be viewed as different emotions. Anxiety refers to the more vague, self‐directed and performance‐related emotion that is shaped and influenced by the social context. Fear, on the other hand, relates to specific threats to physical survival. The two emotions are typically preceded by different antecedents, are experienced differently and evoke different reactions. Three potential models to conceptualize fear and anxiety are introduced. Findings from the study also suggest that social norms prescribe a taboo on anxiety, but not on fear, that is more normative for Americans than for the European respondents. Within this context gender differences were also found. As empirical research about social norms is often at loss for sensible instruments, the study furthermore explored potential methodologies to identify types of individuals that may be particularly useful ‘cultural informants’. Results suggest that the Social Desirability scale could indicate normative attitudes and the Self‐Monitoring scale could provide information on socially appropriate behaviour during and after emotional events.