Concepts of depression in emotion lexicons of eight cultures

CONCEPTS OF DEPRESSION IN EMOTION LEXICONS OF EIGHT CULTURES

M. E. BRANDT

and J. D. BOUCHER

ABSTRACT. Lexicons and taxonomies of emotion terms were gathered from informants in Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Fair/y distinct clusters of depression-type words emerged for Japan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the United States. For the other cu~ture/~ungu~ge groups the depression-type words were predominately subsumed by sadness clusters. Irrespective of language and culture, the folk view that emerged from the semantic network analysis was that depression is the affective state of diminished feelings, particularly marked by the loss of positive, affirming emotions, and this loss or diminuation remains acute.

In the last two decades considerable research has addressed the issue of cultural differences in the manifestation of mental disorders. Depression, an affective disturbance, has constituted a major portion of such psychiatric research. However, problems in definition and meaning of depression have greatly impeded international research efforts (Marsella, 1980). Among the problems noted in reviews of cross-cultural studies of depression is the ubiquitous ethnocentric conceptualization of depression (Marsella, 1980; Kleinman, 1977). Western trained and educated investigators tend to enter a culture with preset categories or a priori notions about the nature of depression (Marsella, 1980). Such a research approach results in observer bias and disregards possible indigenous views of depression. Reports on emotion language suggest that the conception of depression

We thank the following members of the Collaborative Research Team on Emotion and Culture for their help in gathering the records used in this study: Brian Bishop (Australia), Junko Tanaka-Matsumi and Koichi Hasegawa (Japan), Ki-hong Kim (Korea), Jaafar bin Omar (Malaysia), Angela Ginorio (Puerto Rico), Padmasiri De Silva (Sri Lanka), Frank Tillman (United States), Suprapti Sumarmo Markham and Saparinah Sadli (Indonesia). We thank Linda LeResche, Geoffrey White and Dan Landis for their helpful comments on the manuscript. Reprint requests should be senf lo Dr. Jerry Boucher, Institure for Culture tion, East-West Center, 1777 East-West Road, Honol~~lu, HI 96848. 321

and Communica-

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M. E. Brundt and J. D. Boucher

among diverse groups may differ. Many non-Western groups do not appear to have emotion terms equivalent to the English word “depression” (Leighton et al., 1963; Resner & Hartog, 1970; Terminsen & Ryan, 1970; Tseng & Hsu, 1979). Marsella (1980), in fact, concluded that depression “is not well represented among the lexicon of non-Western people” (p. 242). Similarly, in a recent review of cross-cultural studies of emotion, Leff (1977) noted the difficulties encountered in translating sections of the Depression, Anxiety and Irritability schedule of the Present State Exam for the two non-Indo-European language speaking countries involved in the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. For example, the researchers could find only one word in Chinese to stand for three English terms-worry, tension, and anxiety. Yoruba, a Nigerian language, lacked equivalents for the emotion terms of depression and anxiety. Leff proposed that “extensive studies need to be carried out on vocabularies of emotion in non-Indo-European languages . . . ” (p. 346). The diagnostic labeling process and the extent to which psychiatric and indigenous folk definitions of depression agree present an additional research problem. When “untreated cases” of depression become part of a research design in cross-cultural epidemiology studies, this problem becomes acute. The “untreated cases” may be untreated for a variety of reasons. One possibility is that the phenomenon as defined by psychiatric professionals may not be considered a problem in a particular culture. An example of non-congruence between indigenous and professional labeling in a Western culture has been reported by Benoist, Roussin, Fredette, and Rousseau (1965). They found that only 5% of their French Canadian sample labeled a case as depression which conformed to the psychiatric definition of depression. As Marsella (1980) noted, what appears needed is emically derived depression categories relevant to specific, particularly non-Western, cultures. This descriptive study responds to both needs outlined by the reviews of cross-cultural studies of emotion and depression. Specifically it addressed the following: 1. Does an emotion concept of depression serve as a salient factor for organizing Indo- and non-Indo-European lexicons of emotion terms for normal samples of Western and non-Western cultures? 2. If a depression cluster is evident, how does it relate to other culturally defined emotion clusters within each of the culture/language groups? 3. To what extent do these depression clusters of semantically related emotion terms resemble the Western psychiatric view of the affective components of depression?

Concepts of Depression

4. What are the cross-cultural above?

similarities

RESEARCH

and differences

323

in (2) and (3)

CONTEXT

The data presented in this study are an integral part of a research project (Boucher, Ginorio and Brandt, 1981) on indigenous organization of “everyday” language of emotion in eight cultural groups: Australia (English), Indonesia (Indonesian), Japan (Japanese), Korea (Korean), Malaysia (Malay), Puerto Rico (Spanish), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese), and the United States (English). Thus Western (Australia, Puerto Rico, and the United States) and non-Western (Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka) cultures as well as three subgroups of the Indo-European language family (Western Germanic, Romance, and Indic Indo-Iranian), two Independent language families (Japanese, Korean) and two from the Malayo-Polynesian language family are represented. The project was conceived as a descriptive comparative study of cultural constructs of emotion across these culture/language groups. The research was not conducted from a psychiatric perspective, nor was it designed as an exploration of culture specific illness categories or illness classification systems. However, it shares a basic premise with ethnographic semantic research: Much of our covert everyday knowledge about the world is reflected overtly in language used to encode and express that knowledge (White, 1982). The domain of everyday knowledge explored by using lexical data was emotion. Thus no implicit a priori assumptions were made about illness and its universal psycho-physiological properties. Our samples were normal functioning members of their respective cultures. The data obtained from these cultural samples were not influenced by medical diagnostic bias or by possible consequences of mental disorders on linguistic expression, or by the special relationship between therapist and client. Thus the linguistic emotion clusters and the semantic networks among them reflect as directly as possible the normative, indigenous folk view of emotion by the respective cultural samples. The dilemma of insuring cross-cultural comparability while avoiding ethnocentric imposition noted by many cross-cultural researchers (e.g., Triandis & Berry 1980) was explicitly addressed by our methodological approach. The indigenous collaborating researchers, fluent in English and their native languages, verified that their respective languages contained conceptually equivalent terms for the English word “emotion.” Furthermore, the equivalent terms were part of ordinary language and not Western imports or psychiatric technical terms. Our single point of entry for data collection was the indigenous word for “emotion.” No standardized checklists, inventories, rating scales or a priori theoretical definitions of emotion categories were employed.

M. E. Brand

324

and J. D. Bouchn

Elicitation Each of the eight indigenous cultural group’s words used to express emotion were elicited in the following manner. The collaborating researchers asked their respondents to list all the words they could think of which indicated emotion and which completed the frame “1 feel . . ,” or “I am . . . ” (see Table 1 for description of respondents). The frame was modified according to the grammatical structure of each language. Within these constraints, the respondents were free to list as many terms as possible. No prescribed upper or lower limit was set. Thus an emit perspective was maximized with uniformity maintained by the single relevant concept -emotion.

Verification To further maintain uniformity and relevance to the domain of emotion, we determined that behaviors such as “smile” or “frown” and traits such as “pretty” or “smart” were not emotion terms while feeling states TABLE 1 Description of Sample for Emotion Elicitation Task Culture Australia Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia Puerto Rico Sri Lanka United States

N

Females

Males

74 31 50 50 10 127 68 7

37 17 25 19 4 92 17 7

37 14 25 31 6 35 51 0

417

218

199

Description of Subjects Australia-senior high school students from two middle Income schools Indonesia-urban, from 10 ethnic groups, heterogeneous occupations Japan-college students Korea-41 college freshmen, 6 wives, 3 faculty Malaysia-heterogeneous occupations and educational levels Puerto Rico-urban high school students Sri Lanka-university students and professionals United States-college students with no psychology background, 6 undergraduates and 1 graduate

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Concepts of Depression

were. Thus words such as “happy” or “angry” were acceptable members of an emotion lexicon but not “smile” or “smart.” Additional indigenous samples from each culture/language group judged whether the elicited words were feelings, traits, or behaviors. (See Table 2 for description of respondents.) Only those words considered feelings by the majority of each verification sample formed the emotion lexicon of each culture/ language group. This procedure did not eliminate phrases, metaphors, or The imagery (e.g., “Pains my heart, blue, gray, cold, or heart-warming”). important aspect of this verification procedure was that the indigenous informants identified whether an elicited term’s referent was primarily emotional or used to express emotion feelings.

Sorting Task To limit a priori and ethno-disciplinary bias on perceived relationships among the emotion words no predetermined categories or number of categories were designated. The elicited terms were submitted to a “free” sorting procedure performed by a third sample in each culture/language group. (See Table 3 for description of respondents.) Each respondent was

TABLE 2 Description

of Sample for Verification

N Australia Japan Korea Malaysia Puerto Rico Sri Lanka United States Indonesia

30 10 10 30 10 10 IO - 10 120

SUBJECTS Females Males 17 5 3 0 5 0 10 6

13 5 7 30 5 10 0 4

46

74

Task

Age 18-20 20-24 22 Teenage 16-19 20-25 18-20 20-48

Description of Subjects Australia-college freshmen Indonesia-all urban; 9 college students, 1 housewife Japan-college students Korea-college sophomores Malaysia-teenagers from Kuang, Datuk Karamat. Kampong Baharu Puerto Rico-college freshmen Sri Lanka-undergraduate students United States-college freshmen

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M. E. Brand1 and J. D. Bouchet

TABLE 3 Description

of the Sample for Free Sorting Task

N Australia Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia Puerto Rico Sri Lanka United States

Females

Subjects Males

71 35 31 50 40 2 35 29

35 22 15 15 20 17 16 18

36 13 16 35 20 9 19 11

317

158

159

Age 15-17 20-40 20+ 20 13-60 14-65 mostly under 25 20-25

Description of Subjects Australia-high school students from 2 middle class Perth schools, mostly 2nd generation Indonesia-urban from 8 ethnic groups, from high school to universityeducated, 18 students, 10 psychology staff and 7 others Japan-university students (Aoyama University) Korea-college sophomores Malaysia-rural and urban with wide range of educational levels Puerto Rico-junior high school to Ph.D., 2 housewives Sri Lanka-college students and professionals United States-college-students, homogeneous in age and educational level

asked to place the elicited emotion words together to form groups or categories that made sense to him or her. No further instructions were given and no restrictions were placed on the number of groups formed or on the number of words in a group. Upon completion, the words each respondent placed together were recorded using word identification numbers.

Cluster Formation The free sorting task permitted each respondent to construct his or her own model of the relationships of the emotion terms in his or her own language. Within each culture/language group all the individual models were combined using a form of cluster analysis to derive a more general model of the perceived relationships. Details of the cluster analysis have been presented elsewhere (Boucher & Askman, 1980), but the basic data for the derived general model consisted of agreement indices (agreement

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327

frequency values) of respondents within each culture/language sample who placed the same two words together. Only word identification numbers were used in the analysis. The resulting clusters represent the composite agreement among the respondents who sorted their respective emotion lexicons. Cluster means were calculated as indices of internal cluster cohesiveness and intercluster relationships. For example, if 40 of 50 respondents paired word 01 with word 05, the number 40 is the agreement frequency value, that is, 40 respondents independently agreed that these two words (01 and 05) belong together or are closely associated. A mean of such frequency values representing all the pairings within a cluster provided a single value of the average associative strength of all the words within a cluster. This single value is referred to as the within cluster mean (IV). Between cluster means (B) were calculated in a similar fashion. Frequency values of each word in one cluster with each word in every other cluster were found. Means of these values indicate the degree of relatedness between clusters. The emotion clusters which emerged and the relationships among them represent the cultural organization of the lexical emotion domain.

Cluster Labels Only at this point in the analysis (after the cluster analysis by word identification numbers) did word meaning and thus experimenter subjectivity enter into the analysis. We considered the cluster gestalt as a more valid perception of an emotion category than any one word within that cluster. The resulting clusters were labeled by each indigenous experimenter by examining the indigenous words contained in each cluster. The one or two word labels attempted to capture the emotion quality of the cluster as a whole. That is, the type of emotion cluster and its label were determined by the type of words within that cluster. The prior steps in cluster formation provided a check on subjectivity. The cluster analysis and consequently the resultant clusters were quantitatively determined. Word meaning never entered or influenced cluster formation other than at the initial individual respondent sorting level. To summarize, the basis of our method was the single concept of emotion; the data collection methods (lexicon elicitation, sorting task) and cluster labeling procedure were carried out within the context of the particular languages and cultures; and the cluster analysis was based on numerical information. It was only at the point of attempting crosscultural comparison that we needed any language other than the indigenous ones. Therefore, the descriptive power of this emit method was limited only by whether the concept of emotion has meaning within the context of the particular cultures.

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M. E. Brandt and J. D. Boucher

Translation Translation problems have been discussed by Boucher (1979) and others (e.g., Brislin, 1980; Lutz, 1980; Osgood, 1975) and will not be discussed here. Our translation procedure was based on competency and consensus. The persons most fluent in English and the native language were sought for the translation task in each country. (See Table 4 for description of translators.) English was the first language for half the bilingual translators while the native language was the first language for the other half. All translators were college educated. The first task presented to the indigenous language speaking translators was to independently provide English equivalents for the terms in their respective emotion lexicons. If four-fifths of the indigenous translators provided the same English term for a given word, that term was accepted as the English translation. When the consensus was less, the indigenous word and the various English translations were given to the native English speaking bilinguals. They independently selected the best English equivalent from

TABLE 4 Description

of Sample for Translation

N Australia lndonesla Japan Korea Malaysia Puerto Rico Sri Lanka United States

NA 10 IO 7 10 IO IO NA 57

SUBJECTS Females Males

8 7 1 5 5 2

2 3 6 5 5 8

28

29

Task

Age

25-48 26-30 Adults 19-30 25-58 20-45

Description of Subjects Australia-NA Indonesia-psychologists with university education Japan-graduate students: 8 Japanese nationals and 2 Japanese Americans Korea-5 American-educated Koreans (2 of which were English professors who had been interpreters) and 2 American missionaries who have lived in Korea for 20 years Malaysia-adult professionals Puerto Rico-college-level education, various occupations mcluding priests, professors and housewives Sri Lanka-bilinguals from various professions United States-NA

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329

among the various English translations provided. The criterion for accepting the translated term was majority agreement of the native English speaking bilinguals. In cases where the same English term was given for two or more words within each lexicon (e.g., two Korean words were both translated as “bashful”), another native speaking bilingual indicated the difference between the words and where possible refined the translations to indicate such differences.

Cross-cultural Comparisons Despite the care taken in translating the emotion lexicons, it was not assumed that the English translations were exact one-to-one equivalents. Our cross-cultural comparisons, however, did not depend on word-toword identities. The basis of comparison was twofold: (1) the relationship of clusters within the given emotion domain and (2) the relationship of the words within and across clusters. This emphasis on relationships is akin to Good’s (1977) semantic network analysis. That is, we focused on a single focal concept and its cognitive associations. However, in the present study the associative links were determined, not by the researchers intuitive, post-hoc logical analysis of clinical cases but by numerical relationships supplied by the indigenous respondents who performed the free sorting task. Thus our data are a more direct model of informant’s judgments of lexical similarities.

Classification Model and Association Indices Our classification model is not the traditional discrete, digital, all or none model in which: (a) an item (word) either is or is not a category member determined by some set of formal criteria; (b) all items which qualify as category members are equal members; and (c) categories are clearly bounded, distinct entities. Rather our model and data correspond to an analogue conceptualization of categories in which: (a) formal set criteria for membership are absent and members are linked in a family relationship fashion (see Wittgenstein, 1963); (b) items (words) vary in degree of membership in a category; and (c) boundaries among categories are fuzzy (see Rosch, 1978 and Zadeh, 1971). Thus we did not expect or predict that clusters and words within them would be unassociated with or unrelated to other clusters. However, internal cluster cohesion must be of sufficient strength to distinguish a group of words from all others while respecting boundary fuzziness between groups of words. Qualification for a cognitively valid cluster was based on the within cluster mean ( W). Ws index the degree of internal cohesion by representing the strength of association among the words within a given cluster. We determined that a Wof at least 30% of

330

M. E. Brundt

und J. D. Bouchrr

N, (size of sorting sample) was of sufficient, albeit arbitrary, strength to consider a group of words as a cluster or category. Another measure was intercluster association or the extent of relatedness (or non-relatedness) of a given cluster to every other cluster within the domain. Intercluster associations were indexed by between cluster means (B,). A single B indicates the extent of dispersion of a given cluster by reflecting whether that cluster is tightly bounded or more permeable vis-a-vis another cluster. Because the size of each sorting sample (/V\) differed across culture/language groups, the associative measures were converted to proportions for comparability.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Occurrence of Depression Clusters Independent cluster analyses of data from the eight sorting tasks revealed groups of words which met the criterion for a depression cluster in four of the eight culture language groups: Indonesia (Cluster 4), Japan (Cluster II), Sri Lanka (Cluster 4), and the United States (Cluster 19). Thus depression emerged as an organizational concept in only one of the three Western and in only three of the five non-Western cultures. It appears that the broad classification of cultures into dichotomous groups Western vs. non-Western-cannot account for the occurrence (and nonoccurrcncc) of depression clusters. In addition, the language families 01 the emotion lexicons cannot differentiate between occurrence and nonoccurrence of depression clusters. Lexicons of only one of the two independent languages, two of the five Indo-European languages and one of the two Malayo-Polynesian languages were so structured. Moreover, the appearance (and non-appearance) of depression clusters cannot be directly attributed to the presence (or absence) of depressiontype words in the various lexicons. The emotion lexicons of the four groups which did not contain depression clusters did contain depressiontype words. (See Appendix A.) These words were present in a number of clusters throughout the respective emotion domains and did not co-occur within any one cluster. However, many of these depression-type words formed part of the cluster labeled Sadness in each of the four culture/language groups which did not have a distinctive depression cluster. It thus appears that depression as a concept is not necessarily absent. Rather the Australian, tiorean, Puerto Rican and Malaysian samples chose to organize or structure their respective lexicons around the affective concept of sadness which subsumed depression. This suggests that depression was a less salient organizational construct for these four groups. Nevertheless, the clusters which did subsume depression-words (sadness, anxiety, lonely, frustration-dis-

appointment, shame-guilt, painful, and confusion-worry) do appear consonant with our everyday understandings about what depression, as an affective state, entails. Thus, statements to the effect that a concept of depression is totally absent in these four culture language samples are not justified by our data.

Strength and Content of Depression Concepts The word content of each depression cluster is contained in Table 5 which lists the indigenous words, their English translations, each word’s percentage of mean agreement (i.e., the mean number of times the given word was paired with every other word in that cluster divided by NJ, and the grand percentage mean of the cluster as a whole (i.e., W/N,). the strength of internal cohesion indexed by the grand percentage mean varied by culture~language group. The United States’ (38.6%) depression cluster had the strongest degree of internal association among its respective depression words while Sri Lanka’s (30.4%) had the weakest. Thus one may consider the United States’ depression words relative to Sri Lanka’s as forming a more unified conceptual whole. The words themselves and the mood they convey corresponded quite closely to the American psychiatric description of the essential affective features of depression: A general state of ill being (dysphoria) and/or loss of interest and pleasure, with the mood expressed by such words as “depressed,” “sad,” “hopeless,” “discouraged,” “down,” and “not caring anymore.” (See DSM III, 1980.) Not only do these folk conceptions of depression strongly resemble the Western psychiatric definition, they also closely corresponded to one another. We found it difficult, if not impossible, to draw any clear-cut distinctions between and among these clusters. The similarity among them is quite remarkable considering the emit methodological approach used. One cautious distinction concerned word overlap across depression clusters, that is, whether a given word in one of the depression clusters is also present in one or more of the other depression clusters. The United States’ depression concept is the only cluster which seemed to contain no unique words. If the word was found within the United States’ depression cluster, then it (or its grammatical variant) was also found in one or more of the other depression clusters.’ ‘United States word, melancholy, is defined as a) sadness and depression of spirits, b) tendency to be sad, gloomy, or depressed (Webster, 1960). It thus corresponds to “sad,” “gloomy,” and “down” in Indonesia’s and Japan’s clusters. Despondency in the United States’ cluster [defined as loss of courage, confidence, (Webster, 1960)] corresponds to Indonesia’s “hopeless” and Japan’s “timid.”

or hope

M. E. Brandt and J D. Boucher

332

TABLE

5

Content of Depression

INDIGENOUS

WORD

INDONESIA Apes Hina Kalah Kehilangan Pegangan Malang Merana Nelangsa Patah Semangat Pessimis Putus Asa Putus Harapan Sial Sia-Sia JAPAN Akirame ljikeru Gakkarisuru Kiga Fusagu Kiochisuru Kokoroga ltamu Shitsubo Shizumu Shibomu Shinitai Zetsubo Fusagikomu Meiru Moyamoyasuru Rakutan

ENGLISH

WORD

Percentage of Mean Agreement

Bad Luck/Unfortunate Degraded Defeated Having no stronghold Bad Luck/Unlucky Misery Sad Down Pessimistic Discouraged Hopeless Bad Luck/Unhappy Useless

34.3 31.4 25.7 28.6 37.1 37.1 25.7 42.8 37.1 45.7 45.7 37.1 31.4

Grand” Mean %

35.4

Giving up Timid Disappointed Feel Depressed Discouraged Pains my heart Disappointment Feels down Deflated Desperate Despair Get depressed/become Depressed Gloomy Discouragement

32.3 32.3 41.9 38.7 45.2 25.8 35.5 48.4 41.9 35.5 35.5 41.9 41.9 22.6 38.7

Grand” Mean SRI LANKA Aviniscitabhavaya Asahanaya Kalakirima Kansiya Taniya Parajita Pasutavilla Paluwa Balaporottu Sunyatavaya Mammulawa Malvila Valmatvima

Clusters

o/o

Uncertainty/lndecrsion Unrest/Frustration Disillusionment Nostalgia Loneliness Defeatism Repentence/Remorse Desolation Disappointment/Frustration Lost Depressed Estranged

withdrawn

37.2 22.9 34.3 31.4 28.6 34.3 31.4 34.3 34.3 42.8 28.6 25.7 28.6 (conbnued)

333

Concepts of l%pression

TABLE 5 (continued)

INDIGENOUS Hantarvela Hisbava United

ENGLISH

WORD

WORD

Percentage of Mean Agreement

Dejected Emptiness

14.3 34.3

Granda Mean %

30.4

Dejection Desolation Despair Depression Despondency Disappointment Discouragement Disillusionment Loneliness Melancholy Pessimism

48.3 44.8 51.7 55.2 51.7 37.9 41.4 44.8 37.9 34.5 20.7 -

Granda Mean %

38.6

States

Note: Grand” Mean % = WINS

This “non-uniqueness” of the United States’ depression concept suggests that it may represent an emotional core meaning of depression present in each of the other clusters. These other clusters seem to expand somewhat on this core by adding slight tonal nuances. For instance, Indonesia’s concept appears to add the nuance of fatalism or inevitability with such words as apes, malang, and Gal, whereas Sri Lanka’s depression concept appears slightly more agitated or active. (Note the words asahanaya, pusutavilia, and balaporottu sunyatavaya.) However such nuances by no means change the essential core meaning. We tentatively put forth the suggestion that the core of depression present in all four clusters in the sense of internal loss of positive feeling states-loss of hope, confidence, vitality, usefulness, illusions, expectations, courage, decisiveness, and/or connectedness with others-and this loss is not replaced, leaving a void or a metaphorically barren psyche. Examination of the relational networks of the emotion clusters in which depression is embedded provides support for this contention. Relational

Networks

of Depression

All clusters in each culture/~anguage emotion domain were assigned to one of three categories determined by each cluster’s numerical association with depression (i.e., B). Clusters with B, of zero, one or two were classi-

M. E. Bran& and J. D. Bowher

334

fied as having no relationship to depression; those with B, of three, four, or five were assigned to the marginal relationship category; and clusters with six, seven, or eight were classified as strongly associated with depression. The distribution of clusters in each relational category for each culture/language group are presented in Figure 1. Sri Lanka’s and the United States’ percentage distribution of clusters in each relational category were quite similar to one another but different from Japan’s and Indonesia’s distributions, which in turn were similar to each other. Over 80% of the clusters in Sri Lanka’s and the United States’ emotion domain bore no relationship to depression. In contrast, over 60% of the clusters in Japan’s and Indonesia’s emotion domain had either a marginal or strong association with depression. It appears that the United States and Sri Lankan samples made more clear-cut, discrete separations between depression and almost all other clusters, u-bile the opposite was true for Japanese and Indonesian samples. It is possible that these contrasting distributions reflect differences in cognitive sorting styles. That is, there may be a cultural preference for sorting into many as opposed to few groups with fewer groups resulting in greater intercluster associations when the individual groupings are aggregated via the cluster analysis to form the general structural model. If this possibility is true the differences in relational distributions to depression may be more an artifact of the cluster analysis

El 2;

No relationship

:._

Margtnai RelatIonshIp n Strong Relatmwhlp

FIGURE 1. Distribution

of Emotion Clusters Related to Depression.

Concepts of Depression

335

procedure than a valid cognitive perception of the interrelationships of emotion concepts to depression. However, when the inter-relational structural distributions of certain emotion clusters other than depression are and Sure-Conexamined for Japan and Indonesia (i.e., Happy-Peaceful fident for Indonesia and Happy and Pride for Japan), the inter-cluster percentage distributions assumed the form of Sri Lankan and the United States distributions for depression. For example, when Indonesia’s Happy-peaceful cluster is the target emotion concept, 75% of the clusters were not related, 14% were marginally related, and 10.7% were strongly related; for Indonesia’s Sure-Confident cluster 79% were not related, 21% were marginally related and 0% were strongly related. This same structural distribution form holds true for Japan when Happy was the target cluster (i.e., 68%, 24%, and 8%) and when Pride was the target cluster (i.e., 72%, 24%, and 4% for no, marginal, and strong relationship respectively). Thus the pattern of structural relationships to depression for these two culture/language groups does not seem merely due to cognitive sorting style preference. Rather they may reflect a cognitive network of associations within which depression is embedded. If so, these contrasting relational depression distributions suggest that Sri Lanka and the United States samples perceived depression as a more strongly bounded and relatively independent emotion concept than those in Indonesia and Japan. Conversely, the relational networks of emotion concepts appeared more complex, intertwined, and less compartmentalized for Japan’s and Indonesia’s depression concepts. They were more deeply embedded in their respective emotion domains, more loosely bounded, and thus more contextual in meaning. The types of emotion clusters that vary in their relationship to depression provide a more qualitative picture of how depression is perceived and embedded within the emotion domain. Figures 2 to 5 spatially represent the degree of closeness to depression for each emotion cluster for each culture/language group’s emotion domain. This more qualitative network view indicates striking correspondences among all four culture/ language groups. Notable cross-cultural commonality exists among these emotion concepts not related to depression. The feeling states of happiness, love, confidence, contentment, gratitude, surprise, and excitementpassion cross-cut cultural and linguistic differences by being clearly differentiated from depression. The most basic, and perhaps obvious, dimension which distinguishes depression from those above mentioned feeling states is the evaluative factor of negative-bad versus positive-good (See Osgood, 1975). It appears that Sri Lanka and the United States continued beyond this basic positive-negative dichotomy by further differentiating a number of negative emotions (e.g., shame, anger, jealousy, greed, doubt, distrust,

I

0

4

I

5i6

I

7

FIGURE 2. Indonesia:

RELATIONSHIP 1

1 MARGINAL

i3

LongingNostalgia

1 2 NO RELATIONSHIP

POSJTIVE

Guilt

Emotion

Domain’s

Relationship

4

3

f

1 MARGINAL ’ I RELATIONSHIP t

-+--

to Depression.

615

l-4

STRONG RELATIONSHIP

8’

~

Loneliness

Aniiety-Fea; Feelings of Smallness

)

1

0

NO RELATIONSHIP

2

NEGATIVE

I-

r

[ I

5i6

7

DEPRESSION

1 : a

STRONG RELATIONSHIP

6

1 : 7

615

3

1 MARGINAL I RELATIONSHIP

4

-

Anger DislikeUnpleasant JealousyHatred Fear Tense Busy

FIGURE 3. Japan: Emotion Domain’s Relationship to Depression.

I RELATIONSHIP I

4 MARGINAL

PrideBoastful Surprise

0 1 2i3 NO RELATIONSHIP

+

JOY Beloved ContentRefreshed Grateful Absorbedinterested HopeExpectation

POSITIVE

1

0 NO RELATIONSHIP

2

NEGATIVE

NO RELATIONSHIP

Happiness Elation Affection Intrepid Honor-Respect Sexual Passion Comical Gratitude Compassion

; I

I I I

7

I , I

4

312 MARGINAL RELATIONSHIP

-

to Depression.

615

7 Sad

Relationship

a STRONG RELATIONSHIP

FIGURE 4. Sri Lanka: Emotion Domain’s

MARGINAL RELATIONSHIP

r-7

POSITIVE

!

’

1

0 NO RELATIONSHIP

Shame

n

NEGATIVE

I

0

,

1

LongingNostalgia

J

I

FEELING STATES

6

I 7

.

4

b I

I

I

I

1

0

1

NO RELATIONSHIP

-A- .& 312

I MARGlNAL RELATIONSHIP1

I

(Anxiety

DoubtDistru:

L-

FEELING STATES

to Depression.

615

NEGATIVE

Relationship

STRONGRELATIONSHIP

DEPRESSION

FIGURE 5. United States: Emotion Domain’s

NORELATIONSHIP 1 MARGINAL 1 RELATIONSHIP

7

Tenderness Confident Contentment Pride Excitement Surprise-Awe ~miration Gratitude Sympathy

L.!ziy

POSITIVE

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hate) from depression. This further distinction was in strong contrast to Japan and Indonesia which had only positive-good emotions as clear non-associates of depression. In addition, commonality occurred across these four culture/language groups in the clusters that are marginally or strongly related to depression. All of these cultural groups considered only negative-bad emotion clusters as close associates of depression. None of these closer associated concepts can be construed as having a positive evaluative feeling tone. Thus both the internal contents (discussed earlier) and the external qualitative emotion networks mutually support the contention that depression’s core meaning may be the psychological absence or loss of positive emotional states. Another significant similarity emerged among the most strongly related emotions. The feeling state of sadness occurred as a strong associate of depression independently in all four culture/language groups. Sadness, while not identical to depression, was clearly perceived as one of the major emotional correlates of depression regardless of the cultural and linguistic background differences of the samples. These folk conceptions of depression, in addition to their remarkable and rather unexpected commonalities, corresponded in fundamental ways with the Western psychiatric view of depression. That is, each folk conception included the essential affective features of the diagnostic psychiatric category: dysphoric mood state, loss of pleasure, and feelings of sadness. Unlike Sri Lanka and the United States which had only one cluster, Sadness, as a strong depression correlate, Indonesia and Japan had additional negative emotion clusters which were strongly related to depression. For these latter culture/language groups, a sense of regret-repentance (reflected in the words of Indonesia’s Guilt cluster and Japan’s Regret-Repent cluster, e.g., guilty, regret, repent, wrong, feel deeply sorry for) and a loss of decisiveness and certainty (reflected in the words of Indonesia’s Anxiety-Fear cluster and Japan’s Anxiety cluster, e.g., uncertainty, timidness, feelings of inferiority, confused, unsure, doubtful) were differentiated from but were, nevertheless, perceived as strongly related to depression. Both these emotion concepts, however, are considered symptomatic of depression within the Western psychiatric tradition: feelings of guilt “expressed as an excessive reaction to . . . failings or as exaggerated responsibility for some untoward or tragic event” and uncertainty expressed as “difficulty in concentrating, slowed thinking, and indecisiveness” (DSM III, 1980, p. 211.) It is important to note that within Sri Lanka’s depression cluster are words which connote these two feeling states-sense of guilt and loss of pasutavilla, parajita, mammuladecisiveness (e.g., aviniscitabhavaya, wa). The United States’ depression cluster, while containing words ex-

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pressing loss of confidence, courage and expectations, did not contain any words connoting guilt, being sorry for, or regret. Both these two emotion states, like Indonesia and Japan, were expressed in two separate clusters for the United States-Shame-Guilt (e.g., disgrace, guilt, regret, remorse, shame) and Anxiety (e.g., anxiety, confusion, insecurity, worry). But unlike Indonesia and Japan, these two clusters were only marginally related to depression. Thus a paradox exists. While the United States’ folk concept of depression clearly corresponds to certain essential features of the Western diagnostic depression category (e.g., dysphoric mood, sadness, loss of pleasure), one would expect it to have the closest resemblance to the Western psychiatric view of all the folk depression clusters. Yet our data indicate that Sri Lanka’s lay perception is the most akin to the psychiatric one either by containing within its depression cluster or by being closely related to its depression cluster almost all the Western affective psychiatric features: dysphoric mood, uncertainty, sense of guilt or remorse, loss of pleasure, and sadness. Japan and Indonesia’s folk conceptions of depression seem to occupy a middle ground in that their resemblance to psychiatric depression obtains when their closest associates to depression are considered. The United States folk view appears as the least encompassing concept vis-a-vis the psychiatric category. That is, it appears as the most “pure” by containing only the core psychiatric features. An additional anomaly in our data is that of the strong association between guilt, and depression for Japan and Indonesia and somewhat for Sri Lanka. This finding is contrary to the “overwhelming majority of cross-cultural studies of depression in non-Western societies (which) have reported that guilt is not a part of the depression syndrome” (Marsella, 1980, p. 269). Perhaps the nature of our task (i.e. emotion lexicons and sorting by normal samples) permits this relationship to emerge whereas the superordinate-subordinate nature of the clinical studies mentioned above (i.e., diagnosed depressed patients’ communication with a usually Western or Western trained psychiatrist) prevent the expression of guilt due to failure in carrying out a critical responsibility. Admitting failure to a stranger with authority and the sense of regret and guilt surrounding that failure may be a difficult, if not an impossible, expectation for persons in certain non-Western societies. SUMMARY

AND CONCLUSIONS

Of the eight elicited and verified emotion lexicons, fairly distinct clusters of depression-type words emerged for the four culture/language groups of Japan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the United States. It appears that depression was a sufficiently salient semantic organizing concept for these groups despite their cultural and linguistic differences.

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The absence of depression clusters for Australia, Korea, Malaysia, and Puerto Rico cannot be attributed to either restricted emotion vocabularies or to cultural (i.e., non-Western) and linguistic (i.e., non-Indo-European) factors. Depression-type words were part of their respective emotion lexicons. Rather than clustering these words together and apart from others, many of the words formed part of each of these four culture/ language group’s sadness clusters. This suggests that the concept of sadness not only includes or subsumes depression but also was a more dominant semantic construct than depression. Thus the concept of depression per se was not necessarily absent for these groups. It appears as if depression was such an integral part of sadness that it was not separated out as a distinctively different concept. Sadness also occurred as a semantic cluster in the four culture/language groups which had depression clusters. More importantly for our purposes, sadness was among the clusters most highly related to depression for each of these groups. The element of sadness (i.e., a painful loss of someone or something of value) may therefore be a “pan-cultural” feature of everyday understandings of depression. Sadness is also an element, although not an emphasized one, within the Western psychiatric definition of depression. Everyday understandings of depression and the psychiatric diagnostic category, at least, appear consonant on this one aspect, sadness. Furthermore, the word content of the depression clusters which did emerge appeared not only similar across cultural and linguistic groups but also appeared to correspond to the psychiatric affective description of depression: A general state of dysphoria expressed by such words as “depressed,” “sad,” “hopeless,” “discouraged,” “down,” and “not caring anymore.” (See DSM III, 1980.) Such correspondences among folk conceptions and between them and the psychiatric category were unexpected given the cross-cultural psychiatric literature and our emit investigation method. Perhaps our method of using indigenously elicited emotion vocabularies and a free sorting task with normal functioning individuals permitted these correspondences to emerge. Slight differences in nuance among the folk concepts of depression did occur. However, the importance of these nuance differences to the folk meaning of depression could not be assessed in our study. Whether these slight differences make a real difference in meaning is unknown. Perhaps the strongest cross-cultural and linguistic similarity concerned the networks of emotion clusters’ relationship to depression. All clusters conveying positive emotion states (e.g., love, happiness, hope) were clearly unrelated to depression and this clear non-relationship occurred independently in all four culture/language groups. Thus the two “pan-cultural” depression results were: (1) no association with positive affect and (2) an intimate association with sadness.

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The psychiatric definition in DMS III (1980) states that the essential feature of a depressive episode is either a dysphoric mood or loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities and pastimes. Although DMS III depicts the mood state with the aforementioned words, these descriptions are explicitly stated as symptoms of the mood and not the mood per se. Our findings suggest that our samples did not view depression as an either-or phenomenon. The crux of folk conceptions of depression was the loss (not absence) of positive and affirming feelings. Depression’s core meaning seems to be this acute sense of loss creating a barren, emptiness that remains. The mood is not merely dysphoric, nor is it merely loss of pleasure. The folk views which emerged from our semantic network analysis was irrespective of language and culture: Depression is the affective state of diminished feelings, particularly marked by the loss of positive, affirming emotions and this loss or diminution remains acute. This core of depression was particularly apparent for our United States sample. Japan’s and Indonesia’s depression clusters, consonant with the United States’ and Sri Lanka’s by having no positive affect correlates, differed from them by having negative affects in addition to sadness as strong correlates of depression. Of particular note for both these depression clusters is the strong correlate of anxiety and the marginal or strong correlate of anger. This tends to support Leffs (1973, 1974, 1977) findings regarding less differentiation between depression, anxiety, and irritability for non-Indo-European speaking patients when rated by non-Western psychiatrists. Although Leff accounts for this lack of differentiation in terms of his proposed linguistic evolutionary theory of emotion vocabulary, neither his psychiatric rating methods nor our lexical network analysis approach can adequately confirm or deny his theoretical stance. The similar outcomes of the different methods do suggest that depression is more deeply embedded within a matrix of negative affects for some cultural-linguistic groups than for others. Obviously further ethnosemantic research is needed to substantiate the folk definition of depression that our data suggest. A valuable addition to such studies would be procedures for identifying life situations, which when interpreted or given meaning within the cultural systems become critical events of loss leading to the affective experience of depression.

REFERENCES BENOIST, A., ROUSSIN, M., FREDETTE, M., & ROUSSEAU, S. (1965). Depression among French Canadians in Montreal. Transculturul Psychiatric

Research Review, 2, 52-54. BERRY, J. (1980). Introduction to Methodology. In Triandis, (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, Vol. 2. Boston:

H. & Berry, J. Allyn & Bacon.

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BOUCHER, J. (1979). Culture and emotion. In A. Marsella, Ciborowski (Eds.), Perspectives on cross-culturalpsychology. demic Press.

R. Tharp, & T. New York: Aca-

BOUCHER, J., & ASKMAN, V. (1980). The /a.\- n.rretsor progm/tl. Technical Report, Honolulu: Culture Learning Institute, East-West Center. BOUCHER, J., GINORIO, A., & BRANDT, M. (1981). Language of emotion across eight cultures. Technical Reports, Honolulu: Culture Learning Institute, East-West Center. BRISLIN, R. (1980). Translation and content analysis of oral and written material. In H. Triandis & J. Berry (Eds.), Handbook qf cross-cultural psychology, Vol. 2. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Diagnosic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed.), Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1980. GOOD, B. (1977). The heart of what’s the matter: The semantics of illness in Iran. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1, 25-58. KLEINMAN, A. (1977). Depression, somatization, and the “new cross-cultural psychiatry,” Social Science and Medicine, 11, 3-9. LEIGHTON, A., LAMBO, T., HUGHES, C., LEIGTON, D., MURPHY, J., & MACKLIN, D. (1963). Psychiatric disorder among the Yoruba. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. LEFF, J. (1977). The cross-cultural study of emotion. Culfure, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1, 317-350. (1974). Transcultural influences on psychiatrists’ rating of verbally expressed emotion. British Journal of Psychiatry, 125, 336-340. (1973). Culture and the differentiation of emotional states. Brifish Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 299-306. LUTZ, J. (1980). Emotion words and emotional development on Ifaluk Atoll. Unpublished PhD. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. MARSELLA, A. (1980). Depressive experience and disorders across cultures. In H. Triandis & J. Draguns (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, Vol. 6. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. OSGOOD, C. (1975). Cross-cultural universals of affective meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. RESNER, G. & HARTOG, J. (1970). Concepts and terminology of mental disorder among Malays. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, I, 369-381. ROSCH, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and categorization. New York: Halstead. TERMINSEN, J. & J. RYAN. (1970). Health and disease in a British Cotumbian community. Canadian Psychiatric Association Journul, 15, 121-127. TRIANDIS, H., & BERRY, J. (1980). (Eds.) Handbook of cross-culturalpsychology, Vol. 2. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. TSENG, W., & J. HSU. (1969). Chinese culture, personality formation, and mental illness. International Journalof Social Psychiatry, 16, 5-14. WHITE, GEOFFREY M. (1982). The ethnographic study of cultural knowledge of “mental disorder.” In Cultural conceptions of mental health and therapy. A. J. Marsella and G. M. White (eds.). Dorwrecht, Holland: D. Reidel.

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WITTGENSTEIN, L. (1963). Philosophical investigations. New York: Macmillan. ZADEH, L. Quantitative fuzzy semantics. (1971). Information Sciences, 3, 159-176.

APPENDIX A DEPRESSION-TYPE WORDS” PRESENT IN LEXICONS OF THOSE CULTURE/LANGUAGE GROUPS WITHOUT DEPRESSION CLUSTERSb Australia Depressed Despair Discouraged Dispirited Frustrated Glum Lonely Misery Undecided Worried

Puerto Rico Anguish Despair Depression Apathy Disappointment Disillusionment Glum Loneliness

Korea Dejected Dispirited Disappointing Gloomy Dismal Deplorable Lonely Numb Melancholy

Malaysia Disappointed Despirited Distressed Discouraged Emptiness Give up hope Gloomy Lonely Despair

“The words were selected as depression-type words if they corresponded to words contained in the depression clusters of Indonesia, Japan, Sri Lanka and the United States. “Many of the above words for each culture/language group occurred in their respective Sadness clusters. Painful, Anxiety, Shame-Guilt, Confusion-Worry, Lonely, FrustrationDisappointment were the clusters in which the rest of the words occurred. Each of these emotion concepts taken together of depression. (See DSM III, 1980.)

ABSTRACTS

appear

to constitute

the psychiatric

category

TRANSLATIONS

et classification scientif ique des termes repertoire, Indonesie, le Japan, KorP3, La exprjmant 1’ en&ion en Australie, Sri Lanka and les Etats Unis ont ete Malaya&e, Puerto Rico, Des groupes am distincts de termes exprimant la raasembles. depression ont ete trOt.Nt?S au Japan, a Sri Lanka, en Indonesie et les Etats Unis. Four les autres cultures et languages les termes exprimant la depression etaient la plupart du tw canpris dans la fmnille de mots exprimant la tristesse. cette analyse

me

sanantiquea reveleque quelquesoit le languageou la culture, l'opinion populaire oonsiderela depression awe un etat affectif dans lequel il y a peu de sentimentset Plus particulieranent qui est marqueFar la marqueaigueet continued' emotionspositifs.(Author-supplied abstract)

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Se ccleccionaron1Cxiccs y taxonomiasde tkminos de la emociGn de informantesen Australia, Indonesia,el Jatin, area, Malasia, Puerto Rico, Sri Lanka y 10s Estados Unidos. Para 10s OtKOs grupos culturales/lingiiisticos las palabras de tipo-depresib fueron incluidas predominantementepar grupos de la tristeza. Sin tener en cuenta el idianay la cultura, el punto de vista popular que surgio de1 a&lisis de la red sein'antica era que la depresi'ones el estado afectivo de sentimientos disninuidos, marcados particulaK?nente Izcrla l$Kdida de enmciones pmitivas, afirmativas y esta $.rdida 0 disninuci'on sigue siendc grave. (Author-supplied abstract)