When Ella Fosse, a 9-year-old girl from Norway, arrived at Ellis Island in 1922, she entered one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the world at the time. On recounting her passage through Ellis Island alone, she described how difficult it was to communicate as no one else spoke Norwegian. She recalled how she was detained because her natural pallor looked to immigration officials like disease. She couldn’t even find the bathroom since the only English word she knew was “seagulls.”
Ella’s experience highlights the challenges language barriers can pose in ethnically diverse places like early twentieth century New York City. While Ella went on to learn English, her initial lack of shared language meant that she would have had to develop other strategies for interacting with others. And that likely changed how she expressed her emotions.
In a recent article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science (open access), we present evidence that ancestral diversity—the degree to which populations come from many versus few other countries—shapes emotional experience and emotional expression. Simply put, people living in regions with more historical immigration tend to more openly express emotions than those who live in regions with less historical migration. They tend to express rather than suppress bodily displays of emotion, make clear expressions that are easy to interpret, and frequently use smiles to reward others and signal that they are available for social interactions. The findings can inform how we understand and communicate with those from cultures different than our own.
People living in regions with more historical immigration tend to more openly express emotions than those who live in regions with less historical migration.
In our review, we report research showing that people from countries high in ancestral diversity, such as the U.S. and Mexico, freely express their emotions physically, both positive and negative, which is likely to help overcome linguistic barriers. People from countries low in ancestral diversity, such as Japan or Norway, in contrast, tend to suppress emotional expression. We also found that people from places high in ancestral diversity express emotions that are more easily interpreted by people from other countries.
Ancestral diversity also influences the type of emotion people express. Countries and U.S. states high in ancestral diversity tended to have more smiling and laughing than places with less ancestral diversity. Past research shows that smiles signal trustworthiness, openness to cooperation, and a lack of harmful intentions, which may smooth over initial meetings.
Why does an area’s immigration in the past influence emotional expression today? We suspect that people living in regions with a long history of migration likely found it hard to predict other people’s emotional responses, making it difficult to cooperate and live together. A strong need to form new bonds in a society may promote increases in norms of emotional expressiveness, to enhance predictability and understanding of other people’s emotions.
These norms are then passed down both consciously, through parents and teaching institutions to children, and more organically, through social learning and cultural byproducts. For example, if you’re from the U.S., or a similarly ancestrally diverse country, you are likely to smile more often and in more contexts, while those from other parts of the world, like Eastern Europe, may not find that appropriate.
The current research does not allow us to claim that ancestral diversity causes change in emotional expression and experience. But some experimental research has provided a proof of concept for how emotional expressiveness norms may have come about. In a recent study, pairs of participants who were not previously acquainted were instructed to communicate either with or without speaking while completing simple tasks. Some tasks caused the participants to experience strong emotions. Participants who were instructed not to speak adapted by being more facially expressive and by synchronizing their expressions more with their partners.
However, there are alternative theories about why expressivity is higher in regions with greater ancestral diversity. For example, perhaps people who are already more expressive are more likely to live in ethnically diverse regions. There may also be other factors that contribute to differences in emotional expression across regions, such as patterns of weather or other geographical factors. Understanding how emotion norms arise in a culture can foster a general understanding of why people express and experience emotions differently around the globe.
The present research also provides a foundation for improving intercultural interaction. As we interact with people from different cultures, whether in the realms of business, diplomacy, or tourism, it’s important to recognize that socioecological conditions like historical diversity or uniformity aren’t inherently good or bad. They simply shape the cultural landscape and the adaptations that emerge in response to them.
By reframing cultural differences as adaptive responses to socioecological pressures, we can foster a deeper appreciation for diversity. Viewing variations in emotion practices as valuable expressions of a culture’s rich history encourages greater tolerance and understanding of one another and enriches our collective experience.
