Self-Concept Research: Driving International Research Agendas Measuring Emotionality across Cultures: Self-Reported Emotional Experiences as Conceptualizations of Self Sowan Wong and Michael Harris Bond The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong The purpose of this study was to compare the emotional experiences of individuals from different cultures. The self-reported emotional experiences of individuals from 30 nations in the Intercultural Study on Emotional Antecedents and Reactions (ISEAR) database (Scherer, 1997) were analyzed across seven emotions in terms of their intensity, length, and recency. Through exploratory factor analysis, three, single-factor constructs were identified as underlying these different aspects for all seven emotions, namely emotional intensity, emotional length and emotional recency. Using these metrically equivalent constructs, the emotional experiences of citizens from different cultures were compared in terms of their intensity, length and recency. These aspects of emotionality may be related to different features of the social-cultural system. Further studies in the area may help towards understanding the socialization of emotional experience. In layman’s terms, emotions can be understood as strong feelings of any kind (Cowie, 1993), or in more scientific terms, emotions are internal reactions elicited and shaped by the subjective appraisal of antecedent situations or events (see e.g. Scherer, 1998; Soloman, 1976). The perception and expression of emotions – what, when and how one should feel, as well as when and how one should react subsequently – are believed to be shaped and governed by social and cultural norms. These learned perceptions of emotions can be then understood as a kind of conceptualization of self of individuals. For instance, the overt expression of emotions, including facial expression, verbal expression and the physical behavior, may or may not mirror the internal emotional experience of an individual under the influence of the display rules in the culture (Ekman & Friesen, 1971). As the overt expression of emotions of individuals may differ from one culture to another, these differences maybe one of the basis for the formation of the various stereotypes of emotions of people from different cultures (see e.g. Pennebaker, Rimé & Blankenship, 1996). Various cross- cultural studies have been conducted in an attempt to understand the universality and cultural variations of emotions across cultures (e.g., Mesquita & Frijda, 1992; Pennebaker et al., 1996; Scherer & Wallbott, 1994). In most studies, however, even though more than one emotion was being studied, different self-reported emotions were treated and studied separately. In order to explore if different emotions could be synthesized into simpler constructs of emotionality, this study employed the database from the Intercultural Study on Emotional Antecedents and Reactions (ISEAR) initiated by Klaus Scherer and his colleagues (1986), and analyzed the data. The ISEAR database comprised data of the recollected responses on the intensity, length and recency of seven emotions: joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame and guilt, taken from 2,-921 individuals of 37 nations, and is the largest cross-cultural dataset on emotions (Scherer, 1997). When attempting to synthesize the different emotions in the ISEAR dataset, exploratory factor analysis can be used to investigate if there are simpler factor structures of emotionality. In this research, responses on different emotions in the ISEAR database were factor analyzed in terms of their intensity, length and recency. The resulting factor structures would indicate whether and how different emotions could be synthesized into simpler constructs of emotionality. A simplification of separate emotions into different aspects of emotionality would allow researchers to calculate citizen scores of emotionality with comparable samples across cultures. The citizen scores can then reveal the typical psychological make-up of individuals in different nations in terms of their conceptualizations of self with respect to emotionality. Thus, the present study helped lay the groundwork for understanding emotionality across cultures. Future studies can be conducted by discovering and establishing linkages among citizen emotionality, predisposing societal factors, concurrent psychological factors and behavioral outcomes across cultures (see e.g., Lim, Bond & Bond, 2002). Method Material The ISEAR database. The ISEAR database derives from Scherer and his colleagues’ questionnaire study of seven emotions: joy, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, shame, and guilt, conducted in 37 countries on 5 continents (Scherer, 1997). The participants were 2,-921 university students, with 55% women, 45% men, with a mean age of 21.8 years. Among the participants, 43% of them were psychology students while the rest were students from different disciplines (see Scherer, 1997; Scherer & Wallbott, 1994, for further details about the participants). The questionnaire consisted of a general instruction and seven, two-page sections, one for each of the seven emotions studied. The sequence of the seven target emotions in the questionnaire was randomized to control for any ordering effect. Participants were asked “to recall a situation in which he or she had recently experienced a strong emotion of the kind indicated and for which they vividly remembered the circumstances and their reactions” (Scherer, 1997, p. 905). Then, they answered a number of 1