Emotions Through Culture And Gender

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Expressing Emotions Through Culture and Gender

Have you ever thought about the way you express your emotions? Emotions are a significant part of our lives. They enable us to express our feelings to those around us. How we express our emotion is determined by a mixture of culture and family influences that directs our gender to express emotions differently. People are more likely to experience emotions versus being able to express them. They way we express our emotions changes over time. As we get older, we learn about how we should and shouldn’t express our emotions based upon the expectations of our gender in the culture in which we were raised.

“The mainstream definition of emotions refers to a feeling state involving…show more content…
There are infinite types of ways to describe emotions, but the primary six components of emotions are love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear(list devised by Plutchik). Over a lifetime, a person will experience multiple kinds of emotions that are reflected by the events that had taken place. A person will express their emotion differently as they are perceived by the individual.

Depending on the culture you’ve grown up in, you have gender roles of how you’re expected to express your emotions. “Culture in which you live in provides structure, guidelines, expectations, and rules to help us understand, interpret, and express distinct emotions”(Boundless Version 8). There is a stereotype in how men and women are expected to express their emotions that are infused in their culture and society. This stereotype is that men are not as emotional as women are. “Strong evidence has been found that there are differences in the way men and women detect, process, and express emotion.”(Dennis Thompson Jr.) From the day, we are born we were taught on how to express our emotions depending on our gender through our cultural beliefs and values. Where you’ve grown up has a big impact on how you interpret certain events that lead us to experiencing emotions. When experiencing emotions, it is easier to say how you are feeling than to show it.

I grew up in a Navajo Culture to which I know that expectations of all sorts vary from house
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