Cultural Influences in the Processing of Emotion Schemas Related to Death and Violence: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Culture is a key element in determining emotions that people experience when facing death. Recent studies revealed a specific emotion schema for the affective response to death (in comparison with unpleasant/violence-related stimulus), influenced by differences in the personalities and learning processes of the individuals, on the one hand, and differences in the cultural and social contexts of the two groups, on the other. The objective of the research was to compare the English participants’ affective response to pictures of death to those of the Spanish participants, who viewed other types of affective pictures (pleasant, unpleasant/violence-related and neutral). A total of 38 young adults took part in an emotional assessment using a set of pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) database. They indicated the values of valence, arousal and dominance for each affective image. The results show that the images related to death were less unpleasant and caused a lower activation in the English population, while there were no differences in the two group’s responses to unpleasant/violent images.