Cross-cultural expression and perception of shame and guilt in written text: A comparison of L1- and L2-Spanish and Dutch speakers

In this two-part study, we investigate cross-cultural effects in the expression and perception of SHAME and GUILT in texts about social transgressions. SHAME and GUILT are prone to vary between cultures given their inherent social nature. In Study 1, monolingual Dutch and Spanish authors wrote a text in their respective first languages (L1) about a personal wrongdoing in which others were involved. They subsequently self-annotated their texts by indicating the dominant emotion, the number of words and sentences reflecting each emotion, and the emotions’ intensity. These measures were expected to vary between participants belonging to collectivistic (Spanish) and individualistic (Dutch) cultures. In Study 2, bilingual Spanish and Dutch readers similarly annotated texts in both languages, allowing for cross-cultural comparisons of author- and reader-annotations. Individualistic L1-Dutch authors reported more intense GUILT experiences, but collectivistic L1-Spanish authors did not report more intense SHAME. The results provide only partial support for an in-group advantage. For example, same-L1 readers and authors agreed more on emotion intensity, and text elements expressing GUILT. However, for SHAME, agreement was higher among different-L1 readers and authors. Finally, our findings show some in-group advantages for same-L1 speakers. They are partly consistent with previous work showing that individualistic cultures focus on GUILT, but not with the idea that collectivistic cultures focus more on SHAME or that there is a general in-group advantage for emotion detection.