5/24/2021 Week 6: Differences in Emotional Expressivity

 

Emotions are part of our daily life. We express them through words, body language, or facial language. There are six universal emotions like happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, and Fear. However, each of us expresses emotions in different ways. Do you know that the signs and gestures of body language have different meanings according to the culture to which we belong?

Professor John Ivers from BYU-I taught: “Emotional expressivity is one of the things that are more easily misunderstood than many other things in cross-cultural differences. It’s very, very easy to interpret different ranges to misinterpret differently ranges of emotional expressivity.” He even taught that there is a scale of emotional expressiveness where we can find groups with, high tolerant expressiveness (Hispanic and middle-east Europeans), those in the middle (USA), and low tolerant expressiveness (Asian, Scandinavian) who not show their emotions in public.

Being so different in terms of culture, misunderstandings among people can be presented. I am Argentine and as I live in a Hispanic culture I am very expressive when I speak and make many facial expressions, I also move my hands very enthusiastically. It makes me think that in a TESOL class with students from different cultures I should be aware of the existence of these differences to their emotions, feelings and to be respectful according to cultural norms.

Source 

https://video.byui.edu/media/05+Differences+in+Emotional+Expressivity/0_753le546