What We Can Learn About Emotion by Talking With the Hadza

Area of Science:

• Cross-cultural psychology
• Anthropology of emotion
• Qualitative research methods

Background:

• Contemporary psychology often defines emotions as internal subjective states.
• This definition is largely based on studies of European and European American populations.
• This reliance on a narrow demographic limits the universality of psychological theories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how emotions are described and understood in a non-Western cultural context.
• To compare emotion narratives from the Hadza people with those from Americans.
• To challenge the eurocentric view of emotion as solely internal mental states.

Main Methods:

• Inductive, qualitative analysis of interview data.
• Conducted interviews with the Hadza, a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer community.
• Juxtaposed Hadza narratives with interviews from Americans in North Carolina.

Main Results:

• Hadza emotion narratives emphasized action, bodily sensations, the physical environment, immediate needs, and the experiences of others.
• American emotion narratives largely aligned with the Western concept of internal subjective feelings.
• Hadza descriptions challenge the universality of internal mental states as the core of emotion.

Conclusions:

• Subjective feelings and internal mental states may not be the universal organizing principle of emotion.
• Cross-cultural research on emotion narratives reveals significant diversity in meaning-making.
• A more inclusive and robust science of emotion requires incorporating diverse cultural perspectives.