2021/10/19 week 06

 Differences in Emotional Expressivity.


When we think or talk about emotions and the way we express them we can have some clues if we know the culture a person comes from, but really there can be as many differences as people in the world.
 As a way to illustrate this point, I am going to share a story I was once told by a friend serving in Mozambique as a military observer. He had been in contact with some local children, two of them were brothers and about the same age as my friend boys. They would visit my friend almost every day in order to share lunch with him. One day only one of the boys showed up and my friend asked about his brother. The boy answered: "We went fishing yesterday and he was eaten by a shark" My friend thought the boy was joking at first, just to realize moments later it was sadly true. My friend started to cry as the brother would comfort him telling: "no worries, I have more siblings"
My friend was shocked at first thinking: How can this boy be so cold, to realize soon after that this was just a way they would find to cope with their loss.
We almost always tend to think that everyone will have to react the same way we would and that our culture is the only one, just to discover that ours is just one in millions.

Watching the video Differences in Emotional Expressivity I could realize that even within the same country there can be substantial differences that many times would lead to misinterpretations, so imagine how far from our reactions and emotions can people from different cultures be.

 

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