文档介绍：COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2002, 16 (1), 165–192
The role of ethnicity, gender, emotional content, and
contextual differences in physiological, expressive,
and self-reported emotional responses to imagery
Scott R. Vrana and David Rollock
Purdue University, West Lafayette
Cardiovascular responses, skin conductance, corrugator (‘‘frown’’), and zygoma-
ticus (‘‘smile’’) electromyographic activity, and self-reported emotional responses
were examined in response to scenarios that varied in emotional content and
whether they involved interacting with a Black or White person. Black (33 women,
25 men) and White (28 women, 26 men) students imagined joy, neutral, fear, and
anger situations. Emotional contents replicated patterns of physiological and self-
reported emotion found in other studies, although gender differences in emotion
found in other studies were evident only in White participants. Blacks exhibited
more positive facial expressions, while Whites were more negatively expressive.
Blacks, and particularly Black men, exhibited greater blood pressure reactivity to
the emotional contexts. For both White and Black participants, imagined inter-
actions with Blacks increased both positive and negative facial expression. Results
suggest that, compared to Whites, Blacks are both more autonomically reactive to
emotional interactions and may be responded to more emotionally. The results are
discussed in terms of the need to study specific contextual factors rather than broad
cross-cultural characterisations.
The study of emotion through the lens of cultural experience has been parti-
cularly useful in helping to clarify the range of environmental determinants,
appraisal processes, self-management patterns, somatic experience, -
municative functions of emotion (Mesquita, Frijda, & Scherer, 1997; Shweder &
Correspondenc e should be addressed to Scott Vrana, Department of Psychology, Virginia
Commonwealth University, 808 West Frankli