On the context dependence of emotion displays: Perceptions of gold medalists’ expressions of pride

ABSTRACT

In spite of various claims for cross-cultural differences in the experience of pride, studies on the expression of pride have revealed few cross-cultural differences. Five studies using archival data from Olympic and national championships do show cross-cultural differences in the expression of pride and other positive emotions in pride-eliciting contexts, contingent on the social context of the expression, notably the in-group or out-group status of the audience. Chinese gold medalists were perceived to express less pride than American medalists when outperforming in-group competitors; when outperforming out-group members, however, no or smaller cross-cultural differences were observed. These findings are important because they indicate that cultural norms about emotion expression may be activated only in situations in which they serve a function in coordinating people's behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Pride
• positive emotions
• cross-cultural
• emotion expression
• display rules

Acknowledgements

We thank Pinar Boluk, Christopher Camara, Catalina Estrada Mejia, Jamis He, Phoebe Mui, Aysun Ortac, Jens Oostrik, and Dilara Yildirim for their help in gathering materials and collecting data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support from the Government of the Russian Federation within the framework of the implementation of the 5–100 Programme Roadmap of the National Research University Higher School of Economics to the third author is acknowledged.