EMQ » January–March 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 1
By Fred Lewis
A central challenge to the viability of multicultural fields (MCF)[1] is the reality of profound differences among field members. For example, field leaders among themselves may differ over the correct way to lead and what to expect from followers. Followers may disagree among themselves over the right way to follow and what to expect from leaders.[2] If the amount and strength of disagreement is sufficient, these and other differences may become formidable hindrances to harmonious social interaction among field members, as well as toan MCF’s ministry in the world.
For the purpose of this article, I consider multicultural and intercultural to be full synonyms, indicating the presence of three or more cultures interacting among field members. Cross-cultural service indicates the presence of two cultures interacting. It’s hard to get agreement about anything when three or more cultures interact! Intercultural service is much more complicated than cross-cultural service.
How MCF members react to the significant differences among themselves is crucial. Our American approach to relationship-building often begins as a search for common interests out of a desire to become friends,[3] which works fine if everyone shares egalitarian assumptions about social interaction.[4] Finding interests in common among individuals of diverse backgrounds is a challenge, to say the least. A typical, American response to differences and conflict is avoidance.[5] As a culture-trainer of missionaries I’ve stressed the importance of learning the culture of the people you seek to serve.
Empirical research on individualists and collectivists shows that “… individualistic team[6] members negatively influence team performance.”[7] Part of the explanation for that negative influence is attributed to the fact that “individualists accord personal interest greater importance than group needs, looking after themselves and ignoring group interests when they conflict with personal desires.”[8] A later study modifies those statements, concluding that individualistic team members negatively impact team performance only when actually working with collectivistic team members, not when they work alone.[9]
Although cultural differences among MCF members are problematic, in this article I call attention to the centrality of emotion in social interaction, especially on an MCF.[10] Reactions to cultural differences are generally led by emotions, whether the reaction is emotionally positive or negative.[11] Few pause to doubt the accuracy or reliability of what our gut tells us about others. It’s as though we assume our emotions are infallible and fully sanctified guides to right behavior, while at the same time believing they can lead us astray. Therefore, emotion regulation is a necessary skill for serving on an MCF.[12] A 2017 study looked at the use of one aspect of emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal, concluding that “… individual performance in culturally diverse teams is influenced by individuals’ use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate negative emotions.”[13]
The social or relational health of an MCF to a large degree rides on the emotion displays, perceptions and interpretations of emotions of every member by every member. Maintaining and enhancing the emotional and social health of an MCF is a group project, to which every field member may make positive and negative contributions.
Reaching these conclusions was a fruit of my research into intercultural competence, and then preparing training materials for those entering service on an MCF. I eventually realized that Americans may be holding implicit and faulty assumptions about emotions that may hinder their practice of emotion regulation.
Whenever emotions come up as a topic of conversation my brain makes a connection to counseling. My impression of mental health workers, specialists, literature, programs in the States, psychologists, and counselors is that emotions are talked about a lot. One necessary aspect of helping hurting people is getting them to process their feelings. Those who work in these areas provide necessary and important services. In this article, I’m not talking about that world. Instead, I have in mind believers who are basically healthy, but who need help adapting to service on an MCF.
This article seeks to correct flawed concepts of emotions as an aid to the practice of emotion regulation, for the purpose of fostering better emotional, social, and relational health on an MCF. A survey of and responses to implicit and faulty ideas about emotions that may hinder the practice of emotion regulation follows.
Emotions Are Reflex Actions in Response to External Stimuli[14]
Implicit/Faulty Idea
As you physically recoil when you touch something hot or your leg kicks when your knee is tapped in just the right spot, emotions are thought to be automatic responses to environmental input.
Response
There can be terminological confusion between emotions and physical reflexes. For example, you can say: I feel hot; this piece of wood feels smooth; I feel angry. It may be clearer to say that we experience emotions than to say we feel them.
It’s helpful to distinguish between feeling what your physical senses report, such as the sensations of cold or heat, and the subjective experience of an emotion such as joy, so that it’s clear what we’re talking about. It’s necessary to make that distinction because the neural wiring for physical reflexes and emotions are quite different. The wiring for physical reflex responses runs to the spinal cord and back to the foot that stepped on something sharp or the finger that touched something hot.[15] The brain plays no role whatsoever in reflex actions, but emotions are generated by neural circuits in the brain.[16]
Emotions Can’t Be Commanded
Implicit/Faulty Idea
The sense that emotions happen to us suggests we feel at least sometimes passive with respect to them. Our emotions seem to have a life and direction of their own. Since we can’t at will[17] summon the experience of any emotion and we can’t at will stop experiencing an emotion, they can’t be commanded. Since emotions can’t be commanded, God also can’t command us to experience any emotion, such as love.
“Jesus said, ‘A new command I give you: As I have loved you, so you must love one another’” (John 13:34). Some evangelical scholars say that Jesus is not commanding us to feel love for brothers and sisters in Christ but to act in loving ways towards them. These scholars say that love in the Bible doesn’t mean love as an emotion.[18]
Response
It is generally agreed that emotion words in the Bible such as fear, joy, hate, etc. mean the emotions of fear, joy, etc. The same scholars who say agapē love doesn’t include the experience of love also say the words for joy, hate, etc. do include the feelings of joy, hate, etc. them.
Matthew Elliott points out that scholars who say that God can’t command us to feel love bring an unstated assumption about emotions to the Bible: Their implicit assumption or theory of emotions is a non-cognitive one.[19] This assumption is linked to the idea that emotions are simply reflex actions, which is not physiologically accurate.
A basic question about theories of emotion is whether thinking (cognition) happens before or after the experience of an emotion? A non-cognitive theory of emotions contends that thinking happens after experiencing an emotion. A cognitive theory of emotions states that thinking happens before experiencing an emotion, or that emotion and reason operate together. Thinking and judgment are integral to experiencing an emotion.[20]
It seems to me that Jesus wants us to experience love for brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as act in love towards them. Implicitly, then, Jesus held (holds!) a cognitive theory of emotions. Some kind of thinking evidently happens before we experience an emotion. Therefore, He can command us to experience love for God, neighbors, siblings in Christ, enemies, and aliens.
Given that some kind of thinking occurs before the experience of an emotion, changing our emotions is done indirectly by changing how we think. We can alter our emotional responses.[21]
Emotions Are Produced by Emotion Organs in a Specific Area of the Brain
Implicit/Faulty Idea
Each emotion is generated by a specific emotion organ of the human brain, located in the subcortex. The neocortex, the topmost layer of the brain, is not involved in the generation of emotions. Emotion organs appeared in lower forms of life and survive basically unchanged in humans. Each emotion organ produces a distinctive neural footprint when it generates an emotion.[22]
Response
Neuroscientists use functional MRI to locate which areas of the brain “light up” when an individual reports s/he experiences happiness, sadness, anger, etc. Both the neocortex and the subcortex actively contribute to the generation of emotions. Their production is not limited to emotion organs located in the subcortex. Moreover, the same emotion can be generated by different neural circuits. There is no unique neural footprint for each emotion.[23] Emotions are not sub-human, animal responses leftover from our evolutionary past. Emotions are part of what make us human, created in God’s image.
Emotions Are Universal in Terms of Subjective Experience and Facial Display
Implicit/Faulty Idea
Given that emotions are hard-wired into us by a leftover animal brain from our evolutionary past, the subjective experience of each emotion and emotion displays are the same for all humans, even though the degree of emotional expressivity varies from culture to culture.[24] Thus, reading the emotions of MCF members of other cultural backgrounds is no different than reading the emotions of other Americans. “Lie to Me,” a TV show I watched around 2010, was based on these premises.
Response
All humans have the innate capacity to experience and display emotions, just as all humans have the innate capacity to reason. As individuals from different cultures learn different cultural styles of thinking,[25] so individuals from different cultures learn different culturally conditioned emotions. The surrounding culture determines which emotion flavors are included under each linguistic label, as well as the degree of emotional expressivity expected in various social settings.[26] It’s a cultural and social mistake to presume that the content of the emotions you experience are exactly the same as the emotions felt by an individual from another cultural background.
The same cultural symbol such as a smile may mean happiness in one culture and dishonesty in another.[27] Therefore, it can be a significant social mistake to assume that emotion displays by individuals of other cultural backgrounds mean the same thing as they do to Americans. The subjective experience of emotions and emotion displays are not universally the same for all peoples of all cultures but are culturally conditioned for everyone, including Americans.
Therefore, you dare not put your full faith and trust in your gut reaction to those from other cultural backgrounds. Your apparently automatic emotional appraisals may lead you astray.
Reason and Emotion Are Two Separate and Antagonistic Systems in the Human Brain
Implicit/Faulty Idea
The ability to reason is located in the neocortex, the topmost layer of the human brain. Emotions are generated in a completely separate area of the brain, the subcortex. Emotions, thought to be generated by a leftover animal brain, are irrational. Reason seeks (and sometimes fails) to keep irrational, animal emotions under control.
Response
The use of Functional MRI proves there is one cognitive system in the human brain, not two.[28] Reason and emotion are partners in the same cognitive system, not antagonists. Studies of brain injuries and disease show that when neural circuits for emotions are damaged the ability to reason is also impaired. Our ability to reason is neurologically linked to our ability to experience emotions.[29]
Part of the inner struggle we experience between what’s been called reason and emotion is in fact a struggle between the conscious and non-conscious mind, not forgetting the presence and influence of sin in both. A main thing to understand about the non-conscious mind is that it learns, gathering information and thinking about it, albeit apart from our conscious awareness. As events occur and individuals speak to me my non-conscious mind processes the input and chooses from the options available what it thinks is my appropriate emotional response.[30]
It’s been said that emotions are unreliable and can lead us astray.[31] So can reason, when it’s not tethered to reality and truth. That our emotions and reason, our conscious and non-conscious minds, can be out of sync and inconsistent with each other is no surprise. We’re sinners by nature who grew up in sin-tainted social systems that wired our brains at the micro level to feel, think and behave in ways consistent with those broken social systems.[32]
Which category of emotion theories is correct, the cognitive or the non-cognitive? Philosophers have been arguing this question for over 2,000 years. The advent of the Functional MRI settles the question definitively – only a cognitive theory of emotions is supported by the best and most recent empirical evidence. And a cognitive theory of emotions is more consistent with Scripture than a non-cognitive theory of emotions.
We Have Limited or Partial Responsibility for Our Emotions
Implicit/Faulty Idea
A millennia-old tradition holds us responsible to control or subdue negative emotions, based on a belief that good citizens or ordinary individuals have that ability.[33]
Response
It’s important to say with regard to responsibility for emotions that I’m not referring to those who have experienced emotional trauma or abuse, whose brains have in fact been rewired or become habituated as a result of those experiences.
The view of partial or limited responsibility assumes that emotions are “animal passions,” which humans, with the aid of reason can control or, perhaps, direct. Responsibility for our emotions, in this view, resides in our ability to subdue them. As I’ve shown, this view is inconsistent with how emotions are generated in the brain, and with the fact that acting in a socially acceptable manner requires emotions and reason to work together.
Nevertheless, this view survives in American law. Suppose an individual is “overcome with anger” and in that state commits a crime. The person’s lawyer may present a “heat of passion” defense, claiming that the defendant while overcome with anger had reduced capacity to control her/his emotions. If this defense is accepted, then the defendant is considered to have reduced responsibility for the crime and would likely receive a lighter sentence.[34]
A related, popular-level conception is articulated by the phrase, “I can’t help how I feel.” Many years ago I was listening to a mission executive talk about a missionary whom I knew. I agreed that the missionary’s behavior was not what it should have been. The mission executive concluded by shrugging her shoulders and saying, “He can’t help how he feels,” thereby partially excusing the missionary’s behavior.
The command of Jesus to love one another as He loved us makes us responsible to feel love for each other and act in love towards one another. When we fail to feel that love and don’t act according to it, we are, then, less than what Jesus wants us to be.
Conclusion
In my research and preparation of training materials for an MCF, I formed the conviction that emotion regulation is a key skill for life and ministry on an MCF. I also observed that formulations of intercultural competence emphasize its cognitive elements,[35] while largely overlooking the central importance of emotions in relationships of all kinds. An agent of the fictional Adjustment Bureau[36] pointed out that we humans “lead with our emotions.” That is, our first (emotional) reaction to just about everything flows from the non-conscious mind. Emotions express or reveal judgments we reached informally and unreflectively, which may run contrary to our consciously arrived at values and beliefs. Enter emotion regulation.
How do you motivate ordinary, generally emotionally healthy, mono-cultural believers to learn and begin to practice emotion regulation when their underlying, implicit beliefs about emotions are literally out of touch with reality? When they simply don’t know what current cognitive neuroscience has discovered about the brain and emotions? When many consider human emotions to be universal, although in fact, culture and language play large roles in defining what each subjective experience of an emotion consists of? When some us seem at least sometimes to live under Sovereign Emotions? These realities are what this article is intended to address.
An MCF is a microcosm of what certainly will be. In the new heavens and new earth God’s one multilingual, multicultural, multiethnic, multigenerational, multitemporal people will live together in harmony with each other and with Him (Ephesians 2:14–16, 21–22; Colossians 3:11; Revelation 21:1–22:5). Each MCF is a unique microcosm because the specific member cultures of every MCF are different. Feeling love and acting in love towards others who are culturally and emotionally different is a central challenge for an MCF. One skill needed to meet that challenge is the practice of emotion regulation.
Fred Lewis served as a missionary in three cultures and then became a culture-trainer of missionaries. Most recently he’s been preparing training materials for those who serve on multicultural fields.
[1] Here’s a sketch of the reasons I prefer to speak of a multicultural field instead of a multicultural team. The metaphor employed to describe something frames our thinking and acting regarding what the metaphor points to. Team as a metaphor to describe a group of people came from the world of American sports and has been widely adopted in the business world. Using the team metaphor privileges an American understanding of what a multicultural group really is, including how team members ought to act, when a multicultural group by definition isn’t an American group. Team as a metaphor for a group of people doesn’t appear in the Bible, while field as a metaphor does. Also, we’ve been using the word field with reference to mission fields for ages. For an excellent article on metaphors and concepts of team see Cristina B. Gibson and Mary E. Zellmer-Bruhn, “Metaphors and Meaning: An Intercultural Analysis of the Concept of Teamwork” in Administrative Science Quarterly 46, no. 2 (June 2001) 274–303.
[2] Everyone has an Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT), a set of unspoken and unevaluated assumptions about how a leader ought to lead and behave. Everyone also has an Implicit Followership Theory (IFT), a set of unspoken and unevaluated assumptions about how followers should follow and act. Field members and leaders who hold different assumptions about leading and following are probably primed for conflict. To explore ILTs, see Robert J. House, et al., Strategic Leadership Across Cultures: GLOBE Study of CEO Leadership Behavior and Effectiveness in 24 Countries (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014), 18, 38, 54–55, 328–329; To explore IFTs, see Abdullah Can and Mert Aktaş, “Cultural values and followership style preferences” in Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 41 (2012): 84–91, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2010.06.001.
[3] Michael Gundlach, Suzanne Zivnuska, and Jason Stoner, “Understanding the Relationship between Individualism – Collectivism and Team Performance through an Integration of Social Identity Theory and the Social Relations Model” in Human Relations 59, no. 12 (2006): 1608. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726706073193.
[4] Assuming some MCF members are from the Global South, their cultural backgrounds would probably make them more likely to prefer hierarchical social structures rather than egalitarian ones. In Geert Hofstede’s National Dimensions of Culture egalitarianism is associated with low Power Distance. Comfort with hierarchical structures is associated with high Power Distance. Speaking generally, Western countries are low Power Distance, and the Majority World are high Power Distance.
[5] Duane Elmer, “Handling Conflict the American Way,” in Cross-Cultural Conflict: Building Relationships for Effective Ministry (Downers Grove: IVP, 1993), 33–44.
[6] I use “team” in this and a later paragraph instead of “field” because of the sources I’m quoting.
[7] Gundlach, “Understanding the Relationship,” 1604.
[8] Gundlach, “Understanding the Relationship,” 1608.
[9] John A. Wagner III, et al., “Individualism–collectivism and team member performance: Another look” in Journal of Organizational Behavior 33 (September 2012): 948, https://doi.org/10.1002/job.783.
[10] Gerben A. Van Kleef, “Social Effects of Emotions in Groups,” in The Interpersonal Dynamics of Emotion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 101–122.
[11] Matthew A. Elliott, Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006), 40.
[12] Allison Abbe, et al., “Cross-Cultural Competence in Army Leaders: A Conceptual and Empirical Foundation” (Arlington, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 2007), 18–19, http://www.au.af.mil/AU/awc/awcgate/army/sr2008-01.pdf.
[13] Ki Ming Hui, et al., “Effects of Cultural Diversity and Emotional Regulation Strategies on Team Member Performance” in Australasian Journal of Organisational Psychology 10 (2017): E4, https://doi.org/10.1017/orp.2017.4.
[14] Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 29.
[15] “Reflexes,” Physiopedia, (n.d.), https://www.physio-pedia.com/Reflexes; “Voluntary and Reflex Actions,” BioTopics, (n.d.), https://www.biotopics.co.uk/newgcse/voluntaryReflex.html.
[16] If you hold to the James-Lange Theory of Emotions you may think I’ve overstated or underqualified this point. The James-Lange Theory and Antonio Damasio (Descartes’ Error, 1994) believe that emotions are first embodied, meaning that a physiological response in your body happens first, then your brain attaches a cognitive label to the physiological response you’re experiencing. Without going into detail about the James-Lange Theory of Emotions and what Antonio Damasio state, Basic Emotion Theory – which is the most widely known emotion theory today – asserts that emotions are first generated in the brain and then experienced physiologically. That I agree with. However, the James-Lange Theory and BET are both noncognitive theories of emotion; Kristen A. Lindquist, et al., “The Brain Basis of Emotion: A Meta-Analytic Review” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35, no. 3 (2012): 121–143.
[17] The assertion that if you can’t “at will” begin to feel or stop feeling an emotion then you aren’t responsible for it is simplistic. A moment’s reflection shows that we can do almost nothing “at will.” In nearly everything we do there is a time delay between the willing and the doing. Moral philosophers have thought deeply and in incredible detail about our moral responsibility for our emotions. One great chapter on this topic is Justin Oakley, “Responsibility for Emotions,” in Morality and Emotions (New York: Routledge, 1992), 122–159; another good chapter is Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, “Emotions and Morality,” in The Subtlety of Emotions (London: MIT Press, 2000), 243–278.
[18] In general, this line of interpretation says God commands loving behavior towards others that doesn’t include the feeling of love towards them. Several of these scholars equate obedience with love. Matthew Elliott has helpfully collected comments by many scholars of the Bible who deny that agapē love includes emotion or feeling (Faithful Feelings, 135–164). I confess I have not checked all his quotations for accuracy, but the many sources I have checked show he is quoting them accurately. A few examples of quotations must suffice. “The fact that love could be commanded indicates [it] expresses not primarily feeling but a behavioural pattern, i.e. obedience…” (138n45); “Palmer concludes about man’s love for God, ‘This obedience is more fundamental to the nature of God than any feeling’” (139n46); “In understanding this response, we must not confuse love with passion or with sentimentality” (145n63); “Hagner writes of the command to love your enemies, ‘The love he describes, of course, is not an emotion . . . but volitional acts’” (146).
[19] Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 20–27, 138–141.
[20] Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 31.
[21] A very, very simple description of emotion regulation begins with identifying the value, belief, judgment or appraisal that an emotion expresses. Marsha M. Linehan, “Emotion Regulation Skills,” in DBT Skills Training Manual Second Edition (New York: The Guilford Press, 2015), 318–415; Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Mastering Your Emotions,” in How Emotions are Made (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 175–198, 248–250; Joyce L. Hocker and William W. Wilmot, “Emotions in Conflict,” in Interpersonal Conflict Ninth Edition, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014), 190–220. William B. Gudykunst, et al., “Emotion and Communication,” in Building Bridges: Interpersonal Skills for a Changing World (Palo Alto: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 133–160. Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 38.
[22] Barrett summarizes the Classical View of Emotions (“Introduction,” x–xi). The Classical View of Emotions and Basic Emotion Theory were conceptualized and popularized before the technology of neuroimaging (fMRI) existed. Descriptions of the Classical View by adherents of it are found in the following references. Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Paul Ekman, “Are There Basic Emotions?” in Psychological Review 99, no. 3 (1992): 550–553, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c2f4/41a578c1f2a5d147d3ac378454839a6cb217.pdf; Joseph E. LeDoux, “Emotion Circuits in the Brain,” in Annual Review of Neuroscience 23 (2000): 155–184, doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.155; Carroll E. Izard, “Four Systems for Emotion Activation: Cognitive and Noncognitive Processes,” in Psychological Review 100 (1993): 68–90, http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/four_systems_for_emotion_activation-_cognitive_and_noncognitive_processes.pdf.
[23] Barrett, How Emotions are Made, 17–22. Kristen A. Lindquist, et al., “The Brain Basis of Positive and Negative Affect: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis of the Human Neuroimaging Literature,” in Cerebral Cortex 26, no. 5 (2015): 1910–1922, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhv001.
[24] Paul Ekman, “Facial Expressions,” in The Science of Facial Expression, Jose-Miguel Fernandez-Dols and James A. Russell, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 39–56; Carroll E. Izard, “Innate and Universal Facial Expressions: Evidence from Developmental and Cross-Cultural Research,” in Psychological Bulletin 115, no. 2 (1994): 288–299, https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.115.2.288.
[25] Richard Nisbett, The Geography of Thought, (New York: The Free Press, 2003). Shinobu Kitayama, “Mapping Mindsets: The World of Cultural Neuroscience,” Observer 26 (2013), https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/mapping-mindsets/comment-page-1.
[26] The literature on the interplay of culture, emotions and language is enormous. A small sample follows. Barrett, How Emotions are Made, 143–150; Robert C. Solomon, “Emotions Across Cultures,” in True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 252–262; Richard D. Lewis, “Diversity of Cognitive Processes and Concepts of Truth,” in When Teams Collide: Managing the International Team Successfully (Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2012), 272–276; David Matsumoto, et al., “Mapping Expressive Differences Around the World: The Relationship Between Emotional Display Rules in Individualism and Collectivism,” in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 39 (2008): 55–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022107311854. Tim Lomas, “Towards a positive cross-cultural lexicography: Enriching our emotional landscape through 216 ‘untranslatable’ words pertaining to well-being,” in The Journal of Positive Psychology 11, no. 5 (2016):546 – 558, https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1127993; Batja Mesquita and Nico H. Frijda, “Cultural Variations in Emotions: A Review,” in Psychological Bulletin 112, no. 2 (1992): 179-204, https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.2.179. Batja Mesquita, et al., “Doing Emotions: The Role of Culture in Everyday Emotions,” in European Review of Social Psychology 28, no. 1 (2017): 95–133, https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2017.1329107; Rachel E. Jack, Roberto Caldara, and Philippe G. Schyns, “Brief Report: Internal Representations Reveal Cultural Diversity in Expectations of Facial Expressions of Emotion,” in Journal of Experimental Psychology 141, no. 1 (2012): 19–25, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023463. James A. Russell, “Culture and the Categorization of Emotions,” in Psychological Bulletin 110, no. 3 (1991): 426–450, https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.110.3.426.
[27] Kuba Krys, et al., “Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals,” in Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 40 (2016), 101–116, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-015-0226-4.
[28] See Endnote 23.
[29] Antonio Damasio, “Introduction,” Descartes’ Error (New York: Penguin Group, 1999), xv–xvii.
[30] Joseph Shaules, The Intercultural Mind: Connecting Culture, Cognition, and Global Living (Boston: The Intercultural Press, 2015): 10–13; Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow (New York: Farrar, Strous and Giroux, 2011); Jonathan St. B.T. Evans, Thinking Twice: Two Minds in One Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); “Conscious vs. Subconscious Thinking,” Sentis (2012), https://youtu.be/UYSKW3IvZlQ; Barrett, How Emotions Are Made, 170–174.
[31] I am relying largely on what Justin Oakley says about Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals in Oakley’s Morality and the Emotions (New York: Routledge, 1992), 91–94. Oakley quotes Kant as describing emotions as capricious, unreliable, transitory, impulsive, and part of our “lower nature.” Oakley describes Kant’s view of emotions as being “… based on a simple sensation model of emotions as non-cognitive phenomena over which we have little if any control” (Oakley, 94). So far as I understand, our modern (that is, one stream of modern Western thought’s) distrust of emotions originates with Immanuel Kant. Reason, on the other hand, according to Kant, is reliable. As long as you reason from an accurate, comprehensively factual, unbiased, culturally and socially neutral (ha!), and Biblical premise and don’t make any mistakes in logic in either your major or minor premise!
[32] Joshua O. Goh and Denise C. Park, “Culture Sculpts the Perceptual Brain” in Y. J. Chao, Progress in Brain Research, Vol. 178 (New York: Elsevier, 2009), 95–111; Shinobu Kitayama, “Mapping Mindsets;” Barrett, How Emotions Are Made, 94–95, 103–104, 144–146; Mark E. Biddle, “Missing the Mark: Sin and Its Consequences” in Biblical Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 118–122.
[33] Barrett, How Emotions Are Made, “Introduction,” xi, and 222, 225. A good survey of non-cognitive theories of emotion from ancient times to the present is found in Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 19–21.
[34] Barrett, How Emotions Are Made, 221.
[35] For an overview of several conceptions of intercultural competence, see Lily A. Arasaratnam-Smith, “Intercultural Competence: An Overview,” in Darla K. Deardorff and Lily A. Arasaratnam-Smith, eds., in Intercultural Competence in Higher Education: International Approaches, Assessment and Application (New York: Routledge, 2017), 7–18; An excellent conceptualization of intercultural competence done on behalf of the U.S. Army is Allison Abbe, et al., “Cross-Cultural Competence in Army Leaders.”
[36] The Adjustment Bureau, Directed by George Nolfi (Beverly Hills, CA: Universal, 2011).
