Anger in a Just World? The Impact of Cultural Concepts on Cognition and Emotion

The cognitive appraisal of an event is crucial for the elicitation and differentiation of emotions. Similar appraisals will result in similar emotions, but the appraisal of one and the same event may depend on culturally defined concepts. Appraising an event as unjust, for instance, and its agent as responsible are cognitive determinants for anger. Justice, however, is defined through cultural values, and responsibility ascription may follow culture-specific tendencies. Our interdisciplinary study scrutinizes the impact of cultural concepts on the cognitive determinants for anger in Germany and Tonga. The experimental data support our hypothesis that culturally defined self-concepts and beliefs in a just world affect the way in which unjust situations are appraised. Consequently, emotional responses differ between cultures.