Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 63, No. 2, 2007, pp. 339--352 Emotional Climate as Emotion Accessibility: How Countries Prime Emotions Jos´ e-Miguel Fern´ andez-Dols ∗ , Pilar Carrera, Alejandra Hurtado de Mendoza, and Luis Oceja Universidad Aut´ onoma de Madrid Many everyday collective emotions are shared emotional conventions, that is, so- cial practices with an attributed emotional meaning (e.g., complimenting as a sign of conventional love). Emotional conventions lead to a collective priming of some categories of emotion. For example, New Year Eve’s emotional conventions prime words such as “happy.” We define emotional atmosphere and emotional climate as emotion accessibility caused by the priming of specific categories of emotion linked to emotional conventions. We report two sets of data in support of this approach: (1) the accessibility of categories of emotion in relation to unusual historical events (the 1992 World Expo in Seville and the March–April 2004 ter- rorist attacks in Madrid), and (2) the differential priming of specific categories of emotion on the Internet in different countries. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this approach to “emotional climate.” Emotional Conventions Barker (1968) defined behavior settings as patterns of behavior (e.g., a basket- ball game) that are enclosed in a specific temporal and physical location (time of the game, basketball court). Patterns of behavior and location are interdependent. Metaphorically, a society is a mosaic of competing or complementary behavioral settings. People navigate throughout settings in which some emotions are more accessible than others. For example, most Europeans’ typical everyday routine ∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jos´ e-Miguel Fern´ andez-Dols, Departamento de Psicolog´ ıa Social y Metodolog´ ıa, Despacho 84, M´ odulo 4, Universidad Aut´ onoma de Madrid, Facultad de Psicolog´ ıa, 28049, Madrid, Spain [e-mail: jose.dols@uam.es]. This research was supported by the Spanish Government’s grant SEJ2005-06307-PSIC. We thank David Weston for his help in the preparation of this article and Almudena S´ anchez for her help in the collection of some of the data mentioned in this paper. 339 C  2007 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues