#344 What We All Need To Know About Human Emotions & How They Affect Our Behaviour with Batja Mesquita

<p>Are emotions universal? Do you think people are programmed to feel a certain way in specific situations? Or is there a clear distinction between what makes <em>you</em> feel angry, happy or sad, compared to someone else?</p><br><p>Today’s guest is someone whose work I believe can help all of us to make better connections in a fractured, modern world.<em> </em>Batja Mesquita is a social psychologist, affective scientist, and pioneer of cultural psychology. She’s also a Professor of Psychology at the University of Leuven in Belgium and in her ground-breaking book, <a href="https://amzn.to/3ytk709" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions</em></a><em>, </em>she suggests emotions don’t live <em>within</em> us, they arise <em>between</em> us. They are made, not innate; they form in response to social interaction and can differ dramatically across societies and cultures.</p><br><p>That’s not, of course, to deny our emotions are authentic – or to say that we don’t feel them deeply. Rather it’s a way to acknowledge that not everyone will see the same situation in the same way. We can probably all think of occasions where someone from another culture has responded unusually to us – or where our own behaviour has been misunderstood by them.</p><br><p>In this conversation, Batja gives examples of how, as a Dutch academic visiting America, she found her colleagues’ culture of compliments uncomfortable and overfamiliar. She explains that it’s not about our language, although the words we choose to describe our feelings can be significant. Instead, says Batja, our culture, heritage, gender, socioeconomic group or even age influences how we interpret the world – and so what our emotional norms are in a given situation.</p><br><p>We cover so many thought-provoking topics, including:</p><p><br></p><ul><li>What emotions really are – and why anger, shame or pride might differ across cultures.</li><li>Parenting and how we understand and influence our child’s emotions.</li><li>The immi