What Do We Mean by Universal Emotion?

What Do We Mean by Universal Emotion?
A quiet invitation to unearth what lies beneath

Some things feel too big for words. Like longing. Or awe. Or the lump that forms in your throat when something familiar vanishes. We often call these emotions, as if naming them gives them a place to rest. But what do we really mean when we say emotion?

In psychology textbooks, we're told there are universal emotions. Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. These six are said to be hardwired into us, stamped into our biology, visible on our faces no matter where we come from. The research that supports this—especially the work of psychologist Paul Ekman—has been widely accepted for decades.

But is that the whole story?

Whose Universals Are These?

The idea of universal emotions is comforting. It's comforting to believe that we're all connected by certain emotions, regardless of where we live or what language we speak. And there's some truth to that. A baby crying in Kenya isn't so different from one in Kolkata.

Still, emotions don't emerge fully formed from within us. They don't appear out of thin air. They take shape in specific places, in particular ways, through the stories we're told, the words we learn, and the people around us. They are shaped by what we believe, by what we're allowed to feel, and by what our communities expect of us.

Modern researchers, such as Lisa Feldman Barrett, now challenge the very idea of "basic" emotions. Emotions, she says, are not universal biological reactions. They are constructed experiences, formed through culture, memory, language, and learning.

What we name as anger in English may be very different from what Tamil speakers describe as oodal—a playful, exaggerated kind of anger that follows a lovers' quarrel. It isn't rage or resentment. It is tender, theatrical, and full of expectation. It's a word that describes a context. It is an entire way of being. 

Where Does Culture Begin and Psychology End?

In many community-based traditions, emotions are not seen as private, inner states. They are relational. They rise through connection with people, places, ancestors, and even the seasons.

Take, for example, the word yūgen. This Japanese word refers to a deep, mysterious sense of beauty. It's so subtle that its exact English equivalent depends on the context in which it's used. You might feel it when moonlight falls on an empty temple, or when fog drifts silently across a valley at dawn. It is not joy. It is not awe. It's something different. 

How do you plot that on a chart?

The Politics of Feeling

We cannot discuss emotion without also examining history. Emotional worlds are often disrupted or reshaped by outside influences—education systems, dominant cultures, global media, and political ideologies.

When a community is strongly influenced by external forces, something quiet is often lost: the emotional language of that place. The lullabies, the metaphors, the rituals that once gave people room to feel.

It's common to view ancestral practices through a modern lens and perceive them as outdated or irrelevant. Sometimes we call them unscientific. Or we quietly treat them as something to grow out of. We don't realise that it could have been grounded in science at some point. 

It is often interesting to understand what lies beneath these traditions and rituals. It would do us a world of good to remember that the feelings, relationships, grieving, and healing were shaped by the land, the people, and the life that flowed around them.

So perhaps the task isn't to explain or defend them. It is to slow down, to listen, and to let them speak in their own way. To stop judging practices by today's trends. To sit beside what still survives and hold space for it with care.

Sense making and sense giving

All this comes with a quiet reminder. Not everything ancient is inherently good. Some traditions may no longer serve the world in which we live today. Evolution, both social and emotional, has its place and its purpose. Letting go is an art and should be part of the growing process.

What once felt grounding may no longer feel relevant. Our lives change, our needs change, and so do the questions we carry with us.

It's just that we don't turn our backs on the past forcefully. Change doesn't have to come from cutting off the roots. It can come from growing with them—letting the old hold us, even as we stretch toward something new.

And let all this come from sense-making and sense-giving. We don't do it in isolation. We don't do it because it's forced upon us. We do it only because it makes sense in the present context. There's an old Tamil saying that captures this idea beautifully: 'pazhamayil pootha pudhumai malar', a flower of novelty blossoming from tradition. To carry forward what still nourishes us, to let go of what no longer serves us, is emotional wisdom.

Closing Thoughts

So, are emotions really universal? I'm not so sure anymore. Perhaps there are some common threads, but how we feel, what we call it, and what we do with it seem to depend significantly on where we come from and how we've lived. So, going back to the question we began with—are emotions universal?

Biology may provide us a base, but culture and context seem to do most of the shaping.

References and Further Reading:

• Paul Ekman – Research on universal facial expressions of emotion

  Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17(2), 124–129.

• Lisa Feldman Barrett – Theory of constructed emotion

  Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

• Cultural Emotion Concepts

  Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals. Cambridge University Press.

• On Yūgen and Japanese Aesthetics

  Parkes, G. (2005). Japanese Aesthetics. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2005 Edition).

• Indigenous Knowledge and Emotional Practices

  Dei, G. J. Sefa (2002). Spiritual Knowing and Transformative Learning.

  In O'Sullivan, E., Morrell, A., & O'Connor, M. A. (Eds.), Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning. Palgrave Macmillan.

• Emotion Recognition and AI

  Minaee, S., Minaei, M., & Abdolrashidi, A. (2021). Deep-Emotion: Facial Expression Recognition Using Attentional Convolutional Network. Sensors, 21(9), 3046.