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How Universal Are Our Emotions? | The New Yorker

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Psychologists have argued that affect is profoundly shaped by culture. They shouldn’t feel so confident.

Save this story Save this story There’s nothing like migration to reveal how things that seem natural may be artifacts of culture. When I left India for college in England, I was surprised to find that pinching my Adam’s apple didn’t mean, as I had thought it meant everywhere, “on my honor.” I learned to expect only mockery at the side-to-side tilts of the head with which I expressed degrees of agreement or disagreement, and trained myself to keep to the Aristotelian binary of nod and shake. Around that time, I also learned—from watching the British version of “The Office”—that the word “cring

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