Bodily Sensations in Emotion 1 The perception of bodily sensations during emotion : A cross-cultural perspective

This paper reviews the research pertaining to the emotional and cultural determinants of felt bodily sensations. First, the relevant empirical literature addressing actual physiological arousal in emotion is presented. In a subsequent section, the cultural variation of actual physiological changes during emotion induction are examined. Then the review focuses not on the actual physiological changes but on the bodily sensations felt during emotion and on their cultural variations. A special development is given to a research program from our laboratory. Bodily Sensations in Emotion 3 The perception of bodily sensations during emotion: A cross-cultural perspective Thomas Ots, a German physician and ethnologist, has reported the following experience from one of his travels in China: "While riding a train, a Chinese friend and I had eaten a lot of snacks that did not mix well. I suddenly suffered from nausea and realized that I was pressing the epigastric region with one hand. I was sure that I had strained my stomach. At the same moment, my Chinese friend said that he was suffering from vertigo and he seemed very concerned about it. I inquired about his perception several times. He insisted that he was suffering from vertigo and only after some time he remarked that something was wrong with his stomach. I tried also to experience vertigo, and actually found it was not very difficult because the nausea was associated with a feeling of unclarity or confusion in my head. " (Ots, 1990, p. 39) This anectodical story illustrates well how bodily changes in similar situations can be experienced very differently by members of different cultures. Such differences can originate at various levels of the somatisation processes, from the production of physiological changes, to their detection, to their labelling and, ultimatly, to their memory. The present chapter will examine theories and research about the cross-cultural variations in this domain. We will use emotion as a paradigm for studying cross-cultural differences in somatization. Indeed, as many somatic and psychopathological troubles, emotion is associated with physiological changes. These changes produce symptoms that people perceive and report. However, unlike somatic and psychopathological troubles, emotion can be produced and observed in laboratory settings, thus allowing for experimental studies. The findings derived from emotion research can then be generalized to other aspects of somatization. At the begining of the chapter, we will present the theoretical issues at stake in the cross-cultural study of emotion physiology. After, we will review the relevant empirical literature addressing actual physiological arousal and reported bodily sensations in emotion and their cultural variations. Finally, the implications of this research for the understanding of somatization will be presented. Physiological changes in emotion Bodily Sensations in Emotion 4 Since the last century, authors have been arguing in favor of the existence of genetically-determined biological markers of emotion. According to this view, the universe of emotion would consist in a limited set of "basic emotions". Each of them would be characterized by a set of specific patterns in different response systems, such as the facialexpressive response system, or the physiological response system. Darwin (1872) was the one who first proposed this view, with a particular accent on the typical facial expressive features that are observed in each of the basic emotional states. In a theoretical perspective that later became known as the peripheral theory of emotion, James (1884) and Lange (1885) independently proposed that each emotion was characterized by a specific pattern of peripheral physiological changes which, through bottom-up reafferences, would cause the subjective resonances consciously felt by the person. Darwin's view as well as the peripheral perspective are still largely influential on contemporary scene (e.g. Tomkins, 1962; Ekman, 1984; Izard, 1979). In contrast to this conception stressing the physiological differentiation of emotion, other authors have developed a "general arousal" conception of emotion. Cannon (1927), the forerunner of this concept, proposed that the various emotions share a common set of welldelineated changes in the peripheral autonomic system. This state of general arousal, present in every emotional state, would prepare the organism to perform very quickly the energyconsuming efforts involved in adaptative actions like fight or flight. Many later authors adopted a similar perspective (e.g. Duffy 1951; Hebb, 1953, Lindsley; 1951; Schlosberg, 1954). More recently, a quite different perspective on emotion emerged, stressing the social rather than the biological or physiological perspective. Schachter (1964) proposed that the state of general arousal would be no more than a precondition to the emotion. Its perception would elicit the initiation of a cognitive search process aimed at identifying the cause of the undergoing physiological changes. Often, the social context would offer a plausible justification. The particular causal attribution made would then determine the specific nature of the emotional state joy, or anger, or fear and so on felt by the subject. Thus, emotions would be largely plastic with regard to social-environmental factors. Such a perspective was later pushed further in Averill's (1980) social-constructivist theory of emotion. Here, the biological components of emotion are viewed as devoid of any critical role in the development of the emotional state. Emotions are considered as culturally-defined patterns of feelings and behaviors to be adopted by people when confronted to certain social circumstances. Thus, perceived bodily sensations, and even actual physiological manifestations would simply follow from the specific cultural pattern adopted at a given moment. Bodily Sensations in Emotion 5 Obviously, these different perspectives hold different predictions about the crosscultural comparison of physiological changes in emotion. In spite of their conflicting views on the existence of differentiated patterns, every biologically-based theory of emotion would argue in favor of the cross-cultural similarity of actual physiological responses recorded during emotional induction. To the contrary, the social perspective leads to expect that physiological changes in emotion show rather large variations as a function of the culturally prescribed feelings and behaviors. Nevertheless, the debate on cultural similarities and differences in this domain could not be pursued further without first considering the more fundamental question: Are there physiological response patterns that characterize each specific emotional state? Since the fifties, laboratory studies conducted on Western subjects have recurrently addressed the question of the physiological patterning in emotion. Recently, Philippot (1992) reviewed the evidence so far. Eighteen studies were identified that had contrasted several physiological parameters between at least two relatively pure emotional states. Usually, the results of these studies led their authors to conclude that the emotions observed could be differentiated on the basis of the physiological parameters measured. However, the specific differences reported by each particular study are generally not replicated by the other studies. For instance, while some studies found heart rate to be faster in joy as compared to sadness, other studies did not find this contrast or they even observed the opposite. Actually, for each of the 10 physiological parameters considered, we have been unable to identify any cross-study consistency in the contrasts of the four emotions reviewed: joy, anger, fear, and sadness. Hence, the specific differences observed by each individual study should be attributed to factors alien to discrete emotion differentiation, such as the specific characteristics of the stimuli or procedures used to induce emotions in the laboratory. In a review comparing the physiology of fear and anger, Stemmler (1992) reached the same conclusion, and so does Zajonc and McIntosh (1992) in a review of 6 physiological studies using Ekman's facial action paradigm. In sum, there is to date no strong empirical evidence supporting the idea that basic emotions are differentiated at the physiological level. One should not conclude from this statement that, in actuality, emotions only generate an undifferentiated state of physiological activation as proposed by the genral arousal theories of emotion. Rather, our conclusion is that the studies that could appropriatly answer to this question are still to be done. As developed by Stemmler (1991), such studies should control for individual variance and should involve systematic manipulations of situational and emotional parameters. Cultural variation in the physiology of emotion Bodily Sensations in Emotion 6 As there is no consensus within a culture about the patterns of physiological changes signing basic emotions, cross-cultural studies have not been developed yet. There is a very recent exception, though. Indeed, Levenson, Ekman, Heider, & Friesen (1992) observed physiological changes in Indonesian subjects that were posing facial expressions of joy, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness. A previous study conducted by Levenson, Ekman & Friesen (1990) on US students had led the authors to the conclusion that patterned physiological changes could be evidenced such conditions of emotion induction. Comparing the physiological data collected on US students to the data collected on Indonesian subjects, Levenson et al. (1992) observed some cross-cultural consistencies in heart rate and temperature differentiations among several emotions. These results, however, should be interpreted with caution. Indeed, it is not clear whether the physiological changes observed are due to the activation of an emotional state pe