Social Influences on Emotions
Julia Wood reminds readers that not only physiological and perceptual influences affect how we express our emotions; there are also social factors that affect “how we interpret, organize, and respond” to what we see or perceive. Simply said she is saying that our beliefs and culture has an influence on which emotions we choose to display or repress. For example, many Asian culture don’t emphasize boys crying, given that to them it is a sign of weakness whereas compare to Western thinking which believe that ‘its okay for boys to cry.’ Another difference is the feeling of shame. Again most Asian communities learn and express shame more lavishly then Western society. Thus, proving that how we choose to display our affections rest heavily on how we are raised.
It has been thought by scholars that social influences “shape how we feel” and how we control our feelings. It is notion that people communicate their shaped cultural feelings through concepts she described as framing rules, feeling rules, and emotion work.